Optimism in Stories for Children - Experiments in Living

How do you give hope to children when you're not feeling hopeful? What's the difference between optimism and hope? How do children's writers balance light and dark, joy and sadness? And what kind of language sustains and nurtures us through difficult times when we're young? Smriti Halls, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Kate Fox and Gaia Vince join Ian McMillan for a 'hope-ist' Verb.

Smriti Halls Smriti’s books often seek to acknowledge loss and sadness whilst suggesting through image, rhythm and story that we are never truly alone. Smriti reads from ‘Rain Before Rainbows’ and explains how carefully she thought about the balance of dark and light in this book for young children, and about the nature of time. Smriti shares the language that sustained her as a child – Louise May Alcott’s ‘Little Women’ and Oscar Wilde's ‘The Happy Prince’. Books by Smriti are read all over the world: ‘I’m Sticking with You’ was a number one bestseller in the U.S.A and recent stories include ‘The Little Island’ and ‘Elephant in my Kitchen’.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce Screenwriter and author of children’s books Frank Cottrell-Boyce, reads us his story about a world surrounded by cloud and a girl called Sunny who realises there's life beyond it. ‘Murcaster’ is a story written as a ‘hope’ to give to children during this pandemic (it’s one of over 100 such ‘hopes’ included in an anthology by Katherine Rundell ). Frank explains how the writing process itself is inevitably an act of hope, and discusses the influence of hymns – the way even their rhythms can communicate a kind of hopefulness. Frank also considers the way ‘hope’ is integral to the DNA of the ‘Doctor Who’ (he has written for the series) . His most recent book for children is ‘The Runaway Robot’.

Gaia Vince Gaia is an award-winning science journalist, author, and broadcaster. She’s interested in how human systems and Earth’s planetary systems interact. Her book ‘Adventures in the Anthropocene” won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. She discusses her writing on co-operation and on the idea that we are now part of a collective she's named ‘Homni’ (explored in her new book 'Transcendence') . Gaia reads a special commission for The Verb – a letter to her children for them to open when they're in their eighties.

Kate Fox Fresh from captaining Loughborough University on University Challenge, stand-up poet and Verb regular Kate Fox shares the most interesting comments on hope she has come across this year, and quotations from her own childhood reading. These include the extended railway metaphor employed by Government scientist Jonathan Van-Tam, ideas about hopeful journeys from 'Jane Eyre' and 'Alice in Wonderland' and the enduring resonance of 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich’s phrase ‘All shall be well’.