Nobody reads a textbook at eleven at night after a child protection conference. I have tried. You read the same paragraph four times and then you are asleep with your glasses on.
These are the ones I did read. I have lent every one of them to somebody and I have had one back.
None of them is mine.
My Name Is Why, by Lemn Sissay
A poet gets hold of his own care files, and prints what was written about him as a child next to what he remembers.
I read it in a day, and the next morning I opened a case note I had been pleased with and could not get past the first line. I had spelled the child’s name two different ways.
If you only read one book on this list, read this one, and then go and look at your own recording. Do it on a day when you have had a decent lunch.
My Name Is Leon, by Kit de Waal
A boy of nine goes into foster care in the early 1980s, and his baby brother does not come with him.
I read it on a train and had to pretend to the man opposite that I had hay fever. In October. Leon takes things, small things, and keeps them in his bag, and you will want to climb into the page and sit down next to him.
Hackney Child, by Hope Daniels and Morag Livingstone
At nine, she walked into a police station with her little brothers and asked for them all to be taken into care.
I think about that front desk a great deal. About how far a child has to have got before a police station looks like the safe option, and about whoever was on duty, and what they said first.
Careless, by Kirsty Capes
Bess is fifteen, in foster care, and pregnant. It is a novel, and a funny one, which I was not expecting. The author grew up in care herself and it shows in the things Bess notices: who knocks before they come into her room, and who does not.
I gave my copy to a student on placement. She has qualified since. I have not had it back, and I have stopped asking.
Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart
A boy in Glasgow loves his mother, who drinks, and he spends the whole book certain that if he is good enough she will stop.
People ask why children stay loyal to parents who cannot look after them. I used to try to explain. Now I say, read this, and ring me when you have finished. One person rang me from a lay-by.
This Is Going to Hurt, by Adam Kay
A junior doctor’s diaries. You will have read it. Everybody in the office has read it, and the copy in the staff room has a tea ring on it the size of a saucer.
I mention it because it made me jealous. Doctors had somebody to say what it was like. I went looking for ours and could not find one, and that is how I ended up here, which I hold him responsible for.
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz
A child psychiatrist on what frightening things do to a child’s brain, told through the children he treated.
It is the only book from my training that I have read twice, and the only one I have ever seen a foster carer read in a waiting room with a pencil.
If you are going to read them
Do not read them in a row. I tried. Put a detective novel in between, one where the worst thing that happens is to a vicar.
If you lend one to somebody, you will not get it back. Buy two.
What have I missed?
I know I have missed some, and I know somebody is going to tell me which. Go on, then.
Maisie x
Next in the notebook: To foster carers