Books to help adults empathise with children facing challenging home circumstances

Our Writer in Residence Patrice Lawrence shares a few books to help adults empathise with children facing challenging home circumstances.

Earlier in my residency, I wrote an article about the way childhood books both reassured me and isolated me. One book that had a deep positive impact was Rumer Godden’s The Diddakoi. The main character, Kizzy, was of Gypsy heritage. When she started mainstream school, she was bullied.

It chimed with my own experiences of racism as a Black child in 1970s Sussex, experiences that I couldn’t articulate – even if I could trust someone to articulate them to. The knowledge that a stranger could dislike me simply because of my skin colour was overwhelming – and as an adult it still is. 

The Diddakoi was comforting because it was relatable – I felt seen. But was that enough? When you are a child, adults seem infinitely powerful. Imagine if adults who had never experienced racism had read that book and understood it in the same way that I had. Imagine if that book had made them more sensitive, empathetic, and reflective. Imagine if that book had encouraged them to challenge racism in the world! 

The books I’ve highlighted here are a few of the many wonderful books that explore the lives of children and young people facing challenging family circumstances. Why am I recommending these to adults? As children, we quickly learn how an ‘ideal’ family should look and behave. We know when our own family doesn’t match that ideal. The feelings that arise are complicated. We are protective and loyal to the people we love while hoping for change. 

Children currently facing these challenges may want books that take them away from their situation. But they deserve empathy and understanding from the adults around them. I hope these suggestions might help. 

The complexity of a child’s feelings is portrayed with great sensitivity by Catherine Bruton in Bird Boy. Will is trapped in his home, caring for his mother as her mental health declines. When she dies, the grieving, guilt-ridden child is taken far away to stay with his mother’s estranged brother. Will is also befriended by Omar, a refugee child from Afghanistan whose past is traumatic and future uncertain.

It’s a beautiful but unsentimental book about friendship, family and the power of the natural world. 

Nell Hobson in Jane Elson’s Will You Catch Me? is also a carer for a lone mother. Nell’s mother is an alcoholic with all the financial, practical, and emotional uncertainty that brings.

Nell is tough, brimming with imagination, and vulnerable. She has friends and community who support her, but she understandably fears the consequences of disclosing her situation to authorities. It’s an authentic, compassionate story that provokes discussion amongst children and adults alike. 

E. L. Norry’s Fablehouse series may seem like a surprise addition to this list, being both historical and a fantasy. However, the premise of a residential home for children of mixed heritage is based on real life. Holnicote House in Somerset was home to the children of white mothers and African American GIs who had met during the Second World War. Unmarried motherhood was bad enough – but a ‘brown’ baby? No!

Although fantasy adventures, the Fablehouse books are threaded with the impact of racism, the consequences of war for children, and the insecurities of being a child ‘in care’, issues that remain highly relevant.  

Kicked Out by A. M. Dassau is a follow-on from Boy, Everywhere. The core of the story is the friendship between four boys: Ali, Sami, Adaam and Mark. Each faces their own challenges including parents’ new relationships and the aftermath of fleeing war.

Adaam escaped Syria but remains vulnerable without family support. He is facing a lengthy, soul-destroying tangle of bureaucracy to prove that he is a refugee and a child. These books are essential reads as those seeking asylum remain the victim of vilification and misinformation. 

I’m including books with older characters here because it can be easy to forget that teenagers are children. Their behaviour may be judged as if they are adults. I have chosen the following three books because of the writers’ skilled portrayal of their characters’ internal worlds as they respond to challenging circumstances beyond their control. 

The boy in Jason Cockcroft’s illustrated young adult book We Were Wolves is another child affected by war as well as family imprisonment. He lives with John, his father, on a caravan in isolated woodland – John has returned from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan deeply traumatised.

After John’s imprisonment, the boy tries to survive alone, facing menacing adults and his own complex feelings about his father – intense loyalty, but also anger and fear. 

Leah is the eldest sibling of three in Jenny Downham and Louis Hill’s co-written Let the Light In. Leah takes on responsibility for her family after her father dies and her mother is crushed by grief and depression. Her joy comes from a problematic relationship with an older married man.

Her younger brother, Charlie, is a talented artist. Withdrawn and grieving himself, he tries to alleviate the family’s poverty and his own despair by borrowing money from loan sharks. Their stories are told with sensitivity and responsibility. 

Finally, Danielle Jawando’s multi-award-winning When Our Worlds Collided is about three very different young people – Marc, Chantelle and Jackson–who witness Shaq, a young Black man being stabbed in a busy shopping centre.

Marc has bounced between foster homes and is struggling to trust anyone. Chantelle lives with her grandmother and has little money. Jackson is one of a few Black students attending a private school, which his parents hope can be a buffer against racist inequalities.This is a powerful story about the damaging impact of racist stereotyping while being hopeful, warm, and peppered with humour. 

I firmly believe that adults should read children’s books, from picture books through to books for young adults. Yes, of course I am biased, but to not do so means missing out on some superlative storytelling.

Even more importantly, children’s fiction widens our perspectives and urges us to defy our own biases about children facing challenging circumstances. 

Read more from Patrice