Recommended children's booklists sorted by age or topic

Topic: Diverse & Inclusive Books for Lower KS2

I Talk Like A River

Picturebook

Based on the author’s own experiences of having a stutter, this picturebook story captures the experience of coming to terms with speech disfluency and explores themes of self-acceptance, family support, nature and embracing difference.

It’s a beautiful and empathic book that charts a ‘difficult speech day’, when the narrator feels like his words are stuck. He describes hiding in class, hoping not to be asked a question. Sometimes he chooses not to talk. The boy’s father is beautifully supportive, helping him to find a quiet place and showing him that his speech is like the natural movements of a river – bubbling and churning – but that the river is nothing short of a beautiful display of nature’s power. In the author’s note at the end of the book, the author relates his own experience, writing that ”Stuttering is terrifyingly beautiful”.

The power of the father’s supportive words makes a fantastic impact on the boy, demonstrating the impact of positive support and encouragement for others.

The onomatopoeic free verse depicts the stuttering sensation while the lyrical river descriptions express the freedom of self-acceptance. Meanwhile, the stunning watercolour illustrations swirl with life – with patterns that reflect both the disjointed speech and the powerful, sparkling river.

The Lost Homework

Kirsti Beautyman & Richard O’Neill

Picturebook

Part of the Traveller Tales series by Richard O’Neill, this story invites warm and authentic discussions about what learning might look like for different people once they step outside the classroom.

Sonny is usually on top of his schoolwork, but a hectic family wedding weekend gets in the way. He’s busy painting the wedding cart, working out routes and helping out his neighbours. He never even notices his books going missing. Dreading the Monday morning walk to his teacher’s desk, without his homework books, Sonny is surprised to find that his weekend of hands-on learning is valued in ways he never expected.

This empathetic story from Child’s Play is a brilliant window into Traveller heritage as well as a celebration of different learning experiences and ways to be clever.

I Am Not A Label

Cerrie Burnell & Lauren Mark Baldo

Non-fiction

In this stylishly illustrated biography anthology, meet 34 artists, thinkers, athletes and activists with disabilities, from past and present. From Frida Kahlo to Stephen Hawking, find out how these iconic figures have overcome obstacles, owned their differences and paved the way for others by making their bodies and minds work for them.

These short biographies tell the stories of people who have faced unique challenges which have not stopped them from becoming trailblazers, innovators, advocates and makers. Each person is a leading figure in their field, be it sport, science, maths, art, breakdance or the world of pop.

Mum’s Jumper

Jayde Perkin

Picturebook

This beautiful picture book is well suited for being in the hands of a child who experiences the loss of a loved one. It is a story of grief that manages to hold the complexity of the feelings of a child and her dad alongside the rawness of those emotions in a simple and perfect way. The child in the story finds comfort in her mum’s jumper. She muses why her mum left it behind, as she loved it so much. The child wears the jumper all of the time – the smell of her mum merging with her own smell. Her dad explains that grief is like the jumper – it stays the same size but she will grow into it – so the grief never goes away or diminishes, it is just that everything else grows around it.