Kindness Matters - Children's Mental Health Week 2022 - 'Kindness Books' OPHS Library Books

 

Crow Girl by Kate Cann

Lily dreads going back to school after the summer - will the bullying this year be as bad as the last? Hiding away from reality she forms an unlikely alliance with the crows in the woods. With them on side, she gains the confidence to make herself noticed at Kyle Hooper's Halloween party, showing everyone she exists. Original tale of romance and growing up.

Publisher: Barrington Stoke Ltd
ISBN: 9781842999929
Number of pages: 80

A Dangerous Game by Malorie Blackman

Although Sam has a long-term illness, all he wants is the chance to lead a normal life. So he is thrilled when he finally gets his mum and dad to let him go on the school trip to the Scottish Highlands. Sam's desperate for an adventure and wants to prove to everyone that he's just as strong as his friends. But when some of the boys from his class take a reckless risk in order to win a challenge, the trip turns out to be more dangerous than Sam could have imagined. Particularly suitable for struggling, reluctant or dyslexic readers aged 8+.

Publisher: Barrington Stoke Ltd
ISBN: 9781781128237
Number of pages: 120

Wonder by R J PAlacio

I know I’m not an ordinary kid. I mean, sure, I do ordinary things. I eat ice-cream. I ride my bike. I play ball. I have an Xbox. Stuff like that makes me ordinary. I guess. And I feel ordinary. Inside. But I know ordinary kids don’t make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. I know ordinary kids don’t get stared at wherever they go.

Author Raquel Jaramillo, who wrote Wonder under the pen name R.J. Palacio, is a one-time book cover designer and a mother of two boys. It was the act of buying ice cream with one of those boys that lead to her writing the story of Auggie Pullman, when she became anxious about her son’s possible reaction to the visible facial differences of a little girl in the queue.

Her book is an emotional, important tale of a 10-year-old boy with ‘mandibulofacial dysotosis’ or ‘Treacher-Collins syndrome’ – or in plain English ‘rare facial birth disfigurement’. Auggie has had 27 operations, yet his first foray into school life, having been home educated to this point, isn’t so much about what he looks like (“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse”) and more about how people react to him. At Beecher Prep he meets both with cruelty and bullying and with acceptance and kindness, but Jaramillo says it was the latter that was more interesting to write about.

Wonder’s three million-plus readers clearly think so too, and the book has inspired the ‘Choose Kind’ movement based on an idea presented by principle Mr. Tushman in his graduation speech: “If every single person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary, the world would be a better place.”

'The book undoubtedly, and skilfully, manipulates the emotions of readers (watch out dog-lovers in particular) but it will delight children and adults because it's a terrific story and Palacio is exploring some fundamental truths about how humans behave. And how they should behave.’ – The Telegraph

Publisher: Penguin Random House Children's UK
ISBN: 9780552565974
Number of pages: 320