"Fearless" by Liam Hackett, with illustrations by Mike Perry is bang on the nail for my daughter's age group. Liam - founder of the "Ditch the Label" organisation, supporting anti-bullying strategies and working with kids and teens, has curated a fantastic book filled with a ton of advice on a huge range of subjects, mostly dealing with how stereotypes creep into young people's lives at an increasingly early age, and sometimes in the rush to conform or fit in, they lose a little bit of their own identities in the process.
Here then is a book that helps them claw some of that back with tons of amazing anecdotes and case studies from kids like my daughter, ordinary kids who may be dealing with extraordinary situations in work, at home and in their social lives.
Each chapter deals with a particular worry or fear kids might have, from the fear of being yourself, fear of failure, fear of not fitting in or expressing yourself - with plenty of amazing advice from Liam and his team of experts, as well as real life cases - many of which (sadly) my daughter has already encountered as she enters the next phase of her life.
The book is extremely strong on advice surrounding bullying in particular, in whatever form it takes from physical and emotional intimidation through to cyber-bullying and peer pressure, dealt with and discussed in a level-headed and mature way to ensure children do not feel alone in dealing with this nastiness, and giving them plenty of help and advice on who to turn to, and what to do.
This is absolutely superb stuff, it does the things it needs to do without talking down to kids or treating them like they were born yesterday.
"Fearless" by Liam Hackett and Mike Perry is out today, published by Scholastic (kindly supplied for review).