The Book of Hopes
Posted on Monday, April 27, 2020
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A collection of stories about hope, edited by author Katherine Rundell and with contributions from over 100 children's authors and illustrators, can be read for free online.
Those contributing to the book include Lauren Child, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Sophie Dahl, Emily Gravett, Anthony Horowitz, Greg James and Chris Smith, Catherine Johnson, Michael Morpurgo, Patrick Ness, Axel Scheffler, Danny Wallace, Jacqueline Wilson - and Rundell herself. The book is dedicated to those working in the NHS and a gift book based on the project will be published in the autumn, in support of NHS Charities Together. Rundell said, "A few weeks ago, I began a Hope Project; I emailed some of the children's writers and artists whose work I love most. I asked them to write something very short, fiction or non-fiction, or draw something that would make the children reading it feel like possibility-ists: something that would make them laugh or wonder or snort or smile. The response was magnificent, which shouldn't have surprised me, because children's writers and illustrators are professional hunters of hope." The stories, poems, essays and pictures aim to create hope, with true accounts of cats and hares and plastic-devouring caterpillars; doodles and flowers; revolting poems and beautiful poems; stories of space travel and new shoes and dragons. They are all short, up to around 500 words, and the collection can be dipped into. The Book of Hopes can be read via the National Literacy Trust website, here:
