Bath and North East Somerset Libraries

At the age of 17, after a childhood in a fostered family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay.

He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. This is Lemn’s story; a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph.

Sissay reflects on a childhood in care, self-expression, and Britishness, and in doing so explores the institutional care system, race, family, and the meaning of home.

The power of BBC journalist and presenter Ashley John-Baptiste’s book lies not only in sharing the harshness of his experience, but also in showcasing his extraordinary resilience in the darkest of times.

‘Looked After’ tells the story of the UK’s care provision from the inside in a visceral way – and acknowledges the importance of the key people who helped him turn his life around. This is a memoir written from the heart that pulls no punches.

It demonstrates that given opportunity and encouragement – and love – a cared-for boy can become a successful man, a loving husband, a proud father – despite the trauma of his childhood.

It is a shocking fact that whilst just one per cent of young people enter care to be ‘looked after’ by a local authority, foster parents and in children’s homes, a whopping 27 per cent of prisoners have been in care at some time or another. Ben Ashcroft was one of these.

‘Fifty-one Moves’ is his vivid and telling first-hand account of his experiences in 37 different establishments.

This essential guide brings the voices of care-experienced authors to the forefront, sharing their first-hand knowledge and advice for making a real difference.

From big-picture concepts like understanding healthy relationships to more practical things like scrapbooks as physical ways to hold onto happy memories, the authors discuss what really matters to children and young people in care.

They explore how their previous experiences and their carers’ approaches affected the way they felt and reacted during their time in care, providing vital context for carers and professionals.

Dr Amber Elliott explains why children who have experienced early trauma need something different – therapeutic parenting – a kind of everyday ‘superparenting’ which champions empathy over punishment.

Trying to parent children who have trauma-triggered behaviours is tough, and none of us are perfect. Taking this as a starting point, Dr Elliott provides you with a ten-step process to transform your parenting. From developing self-acceptance and ideas for building motivation through to creative ways to think about structure and routine, the book combines principles with practical advice and exercises you can try out at home.

Working together, you and your child can discover the secrets of superparenting and overcome trauma-triggered behaviours!

Why Can’t My Child Behave? provides friendly expert advice on how to respond to difficult behaviours and emotions for parents of children with developmental trauma. Each chapter focusses on the common difficulties faced by carers or parents and features quick, applicable ideas with exercises and illustrations.

How do you react to a child’s difficult behaviour? How do you deal with your own negative emotions? How do you know when to be empathic?

The book looks beyond the traditional punishment/reward strategies and aims to provide an explanation for such questions whilst helping the child in the process.

Parents of children with attachment difficulties, or who have experienced childhood trauma, need to parent differently to meet their child’s specific needs and help them start to make sense of the world.

This book is everything you need in order to therapeutically parent, with an easy to apply model of intervention, and an A-Z of practical advice.

Full of helpful information and advice, this is an introduction to child trauma for any adult caring for or working with a child who has experienced trauma.

It explains what trauma is, how it affects children and what adults can do to facilitate recovery.

Why Love Matters explains why love is essential to brain development in the early years of life, particularly to the development of our social and emotional brain systems, and presents the startling discoveries that provide the answers to how our emotional lives work.

Sue Gerhardt considers how the earliest relationship shapes the baby’s nervous system, with lasting consequences, and how our adult life is influenced by infancy despite our inability to remember babyhood.

She shows how the development of the brain can affect future emotional well being, and goes on to look at specific early ‘pathways’ that can affect the way we respond to stress and lead to conditions such as anorexia, addiction, and anti-social behaviour.

Perfect for 9-11 year olds

Gavin’s got a new neighbour and she’s really annoying. Niki follows him everywhere, bosses him about, and doesn’t care that her parents will obliterate Earth with their galactic warships if she doesn’t stop running away from them.

Can Niki and Gavin sort out the alien despots (aka Mum and Dad) and save the planet? Possibly. Will they become friends along the way?

Perfect for 9-11 year olds

Meet Ferris Foster – the cartooning genius (if he does say so himself) behind the AUSTOUNDOG comic (available exclusively in Ferris’ school playground) and owner of the actual Aldo, quite possibly the world’s most average dog.

When Ferris’ totally annoying neighbour Destiny boasts about her popular YouTube channel, featuring her perfect pooch, Princess Foo Foo, Ferris foolishly claims that Aldo can easily become a BIGGER internet star. There’s just one problem: Aldo has about as much talent as a teaspoon.

Then Ferris and his new foster sister, Tia, accidentally film Aldo doing what looks like an amazing trick – will Aldo finally live up to name of his comic book alter-ego and wow the world with his skills or is this about to be the biggest EPIC FAIL ever?

Perfect for 9-11 year olds

When eleven-year-old Addie goes to stay with a foster-care family on a remote Exmoor farm in the midst of a very cold winter, she is full of hurt, anger and a deep mistrust of everyone around her.

Until one day, when she rescues a tiny wild foal from the moorland snow and Addie discovers that perhaps she’s not so alone after all. And as adventure and unexpected friendship blossom, Addie is determined that both of them will know what is to be home again soon.

Perfect for 9-11 year olds

Following the disappearance of her mum, 10-year-old Aniyah suddenly finds herself living in foster care. With her life in disarray, she knows just one thing for sure: her mum isn’t gone for ever. Because people with the brightest hearts never truly leave. They become stars.

So when a new star is spotted acting strangely in the sky, Aniyah is sure it’s her mum, and she embarks on the adventure of a lifetime to make sure everyone else knows too – an adventure that involves breaking into the Royal Observatory of London, a mischievous scurry of squirrels and the biggest star in Hollywood.

Told through the innocent voice of a child, this is a story that explores the subtle faces and endless impacts of domestic violence, and celebrates the power of hope and resilience.

Perfect for 9-11 year olds

Found abandoned in a bear cave as a baby, Yanka has always wondered about where she is from. She tries to ignore the strange whispers and looks from the villagers, wishing she was as strong on the inside as she is on the outside.

But, when she has to flee her house, looking for answers about who she really is, a journey far beyond one that she ever imagined begins – from icy rivers to smouldering mountains meeting an ever-growing herd of extraordinary friends along the way.Blurb

Perfect for 9-12 year olds

On a day trip to the local sports centre, Simone Biles discovered her natural talent for gymnastics. Despite a challenging start in life, Simone has gone on to become one of the world’s greatest athletes.

Find out how Simone toughed it out in training, went on to win seven Olympic medals and took the bold step of putting her mental health before people’s expectations of her.

Perfect for 9-13 year olds

Ivy believes she can talk to animals, while Nathaniel is obsessed with animal facts. They’re brought together by the arrival of a rare and wondrous sea creature: a giant leatherback turtle who lays her eggs in front of the world’s media.

Soon they’re on a mission to make a difference to the world – even if that’s one animal at a time.

Perfect for 10-14 year olds

11-year-old December knows everything about birds, and everything about getting kicked out of foster homes. All she has of her biological mum is the book she left behind, The Complete Guide to Birds, Volume One, and a photo with a message: ‘In flight is where you’ll find me.’

December knows she’s truly a bird, just waiting for the day she transforms and flies away to reunite with her mum. The scar on her back must be where her wings have started to blossom – she just needs to practise and to find the right tree. She has no choice; it’s the only story that makes sense.

When she’s placed with Eleanor, a new foster mum who runs a taxidermy business and volunteers at a wildlife rescue, December begins to see herself and what home means in a new light. But the story she tells herself about her past is what’s kept December going this long, and she doesn’t know if she can let go of it.

Perfect for 11-14 year olds

Angel finds school hard. She talks back to teachers, she storms out of lessons, and she’s had more detentions than any other Year 8 student – ever.

But really, Angel wants to be good. She wants to fit in, she wants to make friends, and she even wants to win the school baking contest. But it’s hard to be good when everyone expects the worst.

And with her mum not well enough to look after her, and Angel making more and more bad choices, she’s starting to run out of chances.

Perfect for 12-13 year olds

Charlene is a demon knitter. It’s the only thing she enjoys and the only thing she believes she’s really good at. So when her foster mum’s son destroys her latest creation, Charlene loses it and stabs him in the hand with her knitting needle.

It damages a nerve and she gets sucked into the criminal justice system for assault. Charlene’s not sorry and she’s never apologised to anyone in her life. But people keep telling her that if she says sorry, they’ll go easier on her. Can she bring herself to say it and not mean it when her freedom’s at stake?

Perfect for 12-16 year olds

Jemma knows who did the murder. She knows because he told her. And she can’t tell anyone. Fourteen-year-old Jemma has severe cerebral palsy. Unable to communicate or move, she relies on her family and carer for everything.

She has a sharp brain and inquisitive nature, and knows all sorts of things about everyone. But when she is confronted with this terrible secret, she is utterly powerless to do anything. Though that might be about to change.

Join William Wobbly, Sophie Spikey, Rosie Rudey and more in this series of therapeutic storybooks for children. Written by a mum who understands, and her daughter (who used to have a lot of difficult feelings), these insightful stories are for all children functioning at age 3-10, and will help the whole family.

‘Maybe Days’ is a straightforward look at the issues of foster care, the questions that children ask, and the feelings that they confront. A primer for children going into foster care, the book also explains the responsibilities of everyone involved – parents, judges and social workers.

Will I live with my parents again? Will I stay with my foster parents forever? For children in foster care, the answer to many questions is often “maybe”.

Maybe Days addresses the questions, feelings, and concerns these children most often face. Honest and reassuring, it also provides basic information that children want and need to know, including the roles of various people in the foster care system and whom to ask for help.

An extensive afterword for adults caring for foster children describes the child’s experience, underscores the importance of open communication, and outlines a variety of ways to help children adjust to the maybe days, and to thrive.

The powerful story of a young girl growing up in care and searching for her forever family, based on the childhood of author and Olympic-medal-winner Fatima Whitbread.

When Delly Duck lays an egg, she is excited for it to hatch, but she doesn’t really know how to keep an egg safe, or how to look after her duckling when he hatches.

A concerned goose tries to help Delly to learn how to care for her duckling, but it becomes clear that she cannot provide the care he needs, so he is temporarily taken to some kind swans, who keep him safe while Caring Goose finds the right family to look after him.

Families come in all shapes and sizes and from all sorts of backgrounds. They speak various languages, eat different sorts of food, live in different kinds of homes and celebrate special occasions in a variety of ways.

This book lets children explore questions such as ‘What is a family?’, ‘What different sorts of families are there?’ and more.