Mental health and wellbeing

Liberty’s world is thrown off its axis when her parents announce their separation one night, partly due to herfather’s undefined ‘issues’. On that fateful night, Liberty finds and drags home a meteorite that falls near their home. In a Wilson-like scenario, she talks out some of her problems with the rock. Liberty wishes for things to go back to the way they were‘before they fell from space’. Slowly, she understands, and gradually accepts, that life is not that simple. Not even her star maps can provide the answers she seeks, but perhaps there is hope.

Pretty Sane is a journey through the life of Nicola Wall, a person with schizoaffective disorder. From her earliest memory right through to her current adventures in motherhood, we see the countless obstacles and difficulties faced by someone with this mental illness. With only Freddie, the voice in her head, to turn to for guidance and help with the other noise and voices in her mind, Nicola takes the reader through a raw and intimate story of how she came to write this book while providing ‘Mental Help Tips’ she has learned along the way that could be useful for any reader.

Onjali Q. Raúf, is an activist with a strong track-record of working with refugees and with women and children who are victims of abuse and trafficking. Her first book, which won both the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story, offered a child’s perspective of the refugee crisis, and the title under review tackles a range of other socially pertinent issues, the core one being how easy it is for people to slip into homelessness.

When visiting a school, Paralympic gold medalist Danielle Brown was asked by seven-year-old Nathan Kai if she had ever written a book for children about being their best selves, thus the idea of Be Your Best Self was created and then co-authored by both.

Here is a book about the sounds of words, the feeling of saying, and the isolation and barriers that speech impediments can bring. Furthermore, it’s a book about a kind and thoughtful father, gently parsing and reframing – helping to put language on experience – and how this connection can change everything.

Very often, we are drawn not towards the uplifting and positive stories in the media but to the news that scares us and often make us feel anxious. Early in this informative text we learn that historically, humans were hardwired to focus upon and remember what’s dangerous as this made us more alert to danger. Unfortunately, this trait also means that bad news is what we remember most easily so it’s not uncommon to feel like there is no good news. However, the author soon convinces us that this isn’t the case at all.

At a time when teenagers lead busy lives both on and offline, and many are sleeping less than before, the award-winning teenage well-being expert Nicola Morgan looks at the all-important fundamentals of sleep for teens. Broken down into accessible chapters that balance science with practical advice, Morgan looks at the necessity of good sleep, especially for developing brains and the damage that a lack of sleep can do. By taking accessible information from studies, Morgan shows how the brain and sleep can be affected by a lack of sleep, diet and exercise.

Five-year-old Delia lives in San Francisco and dreams of becoming a world-famous fashion designer. When Delia begins to stutter, she loses all of her confidence and battles with anxiety and worry. Throughout this book, Delia deals with low self-esteem and bullying as a result of her stutter, before learning to see the bigger picture. Different Like Delia is a charming book about the importance of self-acceptance, friendship and kindness.

A companion to the highly successful and beautifully illustrated picturebook The Girls, The Boys follows the lives and friendship of four boys – Rey, Nattie, Bobby and Tam – through the years of babyhood to adulthood. We first meet the boys on a beach with their mothers and follow them through their adolescence and into adulthood. Throughout the book the beach plays an important role for the boys; as they learn and grow, the beach at times seems to be its own character.

An entertaining and clear guide to what consent is, this book outlines how we can apply the principles of consent when making decisions both for ourselves and with others. This is a serious topic, but it’s handled here with a light and humorous touch. The central concepts are presented in an accessible and memorable way, with the help of the vibrant and inclusive illustrations. One of the most useful concepts is a ‘Should Story’, which is told to us to try and make us do what’s ‘normal’, even if it’s not harmful to do otherwise.