The Book of Hopes: Words and Pictures to Comfort, Inspire and Entertain

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An anthology on the theme of hope … it includes a rich range of images, poetry, stories and non-fiction' - Sunday Times, ' Stories to charm on endless days' In just the past week, I’ve listened to my young daughter pretend to cancel a holiday, and watched her attempt to hug the laptop from which her best friend blew kisses. Children live so much in the moment that it is hard for them to see beyond this new life of isolation. And we cannot promise that the world will be the same when all this is over. Indeed, we cannot make any promises at all.

The loss of habitats for her beloved primates; how many humans still rely on various natural resources to keep themselves in their homes, traveling in their vehicles and feeding themselves on a daily basis. Piers Torday, whose award-­winning work includes The Last Wild and The Lost Magician, agrees. “I have found it very hard to write during the crisis – to focus, essentially,” he says. “But writing this story for Katherine was a joy.” His contribution, like so much of his writing, is about nature. “I wrote about the hare. They are splendid creatures, and the heroes of my next book, but crucially, they have long been associated with renewal. Life continues. The natural world carries on as it always has. It will still be there when we emerge.” The collection, published by Bloomsbury, is dedicated to the doctors, nurses, carers, porters, cleaners and everyone working in hospitals. Read the book 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 … I hope that the imagination can be a place of shelter for children and that The Book of Hopes might be useful in that, even if only a little.' We go swimming,” said Sila. “I’ll take you to the river tomorrow. It’s better than any pool. We swim with fish.” And snakes, she thought, but decided not to say.What we can give children, though, is hope. Hope for something better, for something curious and wonderful; to light the great beyond. And into this space has stepped Costa Prize-winning children’s author Katherine Rundell. A few weeks ago, she wrote to me, and to more than 100 other children’s authors and illustrators, names as illustrious as Michael Morpurgo, Mark Haddon, Sophie Dahl, Axel Scheffler, Anthony Horowitz and Lauren Child, with a request: write something – anything – that will offer children hope. When schools were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic in both 2020 and 2021 Bloomsbury generously permitted us to share The Book of Hopes as an ebook freely accessible to schools and families. Only, when she woke, Yasmin had gone. It was then that Sila knew she would never see Yasmin again. And that she would never stop looking, even when she found grey in her hair and her climbing days were done. The stories themselves were very moving. Goodall prefers to share stories rather than give statistics because you are far more likely to remember a story than a bunch of random statistics. choose to stay connected with family, friends, and community…work together — collectively — there are things we can do that actively makes a difference.

I was truly hoping for more "Hope" in this book, but found more despair instead as it described all that is wrong with the world, especially with all the global warming/climate exchange affects going on with green house gas emissions. Its main message: every single individual matters, has a role to play, and makes an impact on the planet – every single day. And we have a choice as to what sort of impact we will make.” Dr. Goodall is best known for groundbreaking studies of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, transformative research that continues to this day as the longest-running wild chimpanzee study in the world. Dr. Goodall is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, a global conservation, advocacy, animal welfare, research, and youth empowerment organization, including her global Roots & Shoots program.This is a marvelous book and one in which I highlighted so many quotes, I realized I needed to hold a copy in my hands. My own copy that I could highlight passages to read again and again, when needed.