Top 10 Books About Fostered Children
Teaching your child to read is the key to your child’s academic future. The love of reading has so many benefits and is at the heart of all formal education. Books teach your child about relationships, situations, personalities and life experiences. As a foster carer, reading can help fostered children and young people make sense of their situation. Especially reading books with similar situations and experience your fostered child has had.
Keren David’s Top 10 Books
Author Keren David shares her top 10 children’s books, some of which are aimed at teenagers, about the experiences of being fostered. They will help them to make sense of it all and to help you in your role as a foster carer.
1. The High House by Honor Arundel
Emma and her older brother Richard are orphaned by a car crash. Emma leaves her life in the suburbs to live in Edinburgh with her Aunt Patsy, an artist who has no routine, likes a glass too many of red wine and parties until sunrise with her students! Emma has to learn to slowly adapt to her new life.
2. Jacqueline Wilson’s Tracy Beaker series
Tracy Beaker is one of the most popular children’s series in the last 20 years and has even developed into a television series, a film and a video game! Tracy is an angry 10 year old girl from a difficult background living in care, spiraling between the foster home she refers to as a “dumping ground” and foster parents that she doesn’t particularly see eye to eye with! Tracy has been rejected by two sets of foster parents, rebels against all the rules and desperately longs for her inadequate mother who promised to return for her.
3. Wintle’s Wonders (later renamed Dancing Shoes) by Noel Streatfeild
Twice-orphaned Hilary is a talented dancer who lives with adopted sister Rachel and Aunt Cora who adopted the girls. Hilary lost two mothers by the age of 10 and dreams of marrying young and having “lots and lots of children”, despite sister Rachel disagreeing, believing this would be a waste of her dancing talent.
4. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Mr Earnshaw returns from a trip to Liverpool with a “dirty, ragged black-haired child” that he has found starving on the street. However his family refer to her as a “gipsy brat” and are appalled by her intrusion. What starts off as a saving grace for Heathcliff turns out to be a sad and heartbreaking story, when his foster father Mr Earnshaw dies and he is vulnerable to abuse. A passionate story of love and hatred that tears a family apart.
5. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
“You would cry, too, if you were an orphan and had come to a place you thought was going to be home and found that they didn’t want you because you weren’t a boy!” cries orphan Anne when she discovers that the elderly Cuthbert siblings were expecting a boy to help with the farm work, and got her instead. With a battle on her hands to prove herself worthy, luckily her determination, strength and courage win over their hearts.
6. Close Your Pretty Eyes by Sally Nicholls
Having been in care since five years old and just about to enter her sixteenth placement, Olivia is an unruly, destructive and angry girl, who tests every new foster parent to their limit until they cannot cope anymore. Will she ever escape the constant rebound from foster home to foster home or will things be different when she goes to live with single father Jim and his children?
7. Blood Family by Anne Fine
Neglect, violence and imprisonment are constant factors in Edward’s first years. Until he is finally rescued and adopted. A successful, safe and promising story… until Edward reaches adolescence and his past experiences resurface and seem about to destroy him.
8. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
The Baudelaire siblings are sadly orphaned but go to live with their evil uncle, Count Olaf, who makes them do all the household chores and is only interested in getting his hands on their fortune. In the 14-book series, things go from bad to worse, but luckily the Baudelaire siblings are resourceful and loyal.
9. From Where I Stand by Tabitha Suzuma
Raven is placed in care after his mother’s death. He is a troubled teenage boy, but slowly he trusts a new friend enough to draw her into his hunt for his mother’s killer – but can Raven’s word be trusted?
10. Saffy’s Angel by Hilary McKay
Unaware that she was adopted by her aunt and uncle until one fateful day when she looks at the paint chart where all the childrens names are and realises that hers isn’t there. Saffy begins a desperate quest to discover her past, which takes her to Italy and uncovers some big secrets.
These are just a few that Keren David has picked out, if you have any favourites of your own then please share these by commenting below.
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