Cover Image: The Book of Hopes

The Book of Hopes

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Member Reviews

A beautiful, powerful and timely book about the strength of hope and the magic of storytelling.

Children's fiction is a hotbed of positivity and inspiration that provides the space for experience and identification. I loved finding the work of authors I'd grown up with, such as Lauren St John and Katherine Rundell, alongside fantastic new and emerging talent.

The combination of illustration and the written word lent even more power to the messages within the book and created a lovely visual element.

I especially enjoyed the pieces that weren't fictional but told entirely of the magic of nature as it is - one of the strongest places to look for hope.

"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow."
- Audrey Hepburn

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A lovely diverse collection of stories from wonderful contemporary authors. I've used several stories for guided reading with my class and they enjoyed!

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This book makes a terrific gift and beautiful collection of stories. Definitely a book for keeps. The cover, and illustrations are all very nicely book together.

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A gorgeous book from start to finish. One that deserves to be owned physically so that I can return to my favourites, mark passages of hope and happiness, and share with family and friends. Truly beautiful.

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Beautifully produced collection of writings that really are a who’s who in the U.K. children’s writing world.

A treat to be treasured for a long time to come.

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The Book of Hopes is a beautiful collection of short stories, extracts, poems, illustrations and musings from so many amazing children’s authors, poets and illustrators. I couldn’t possibly choose a favourite entry! I love how you can dip in and out or while away an hour poring over it. The powerful messages contained within its pages will entertain, comfort and bring hope to children and adults alike. One not to be missed.

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Because this book was made freely available online during the first months of the COVID 19 pandemic, unusually for Netgalley reads, I had already read bits and used it in school when I requested a copy to review. It is a lovely collection put together by one of our school's favourite authors, Katherine Rundell, and has something for everyone. When it was first revealed, I hoped they would produce a hardcopy and so I am greatly looking forward to buying it.

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A gorgeous book filled with the most heartwarming pieces of literature you will ever come across. Beautiful from start to finish!

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This is a beautiful book. Beautiful illustrations, beautiful words and beautiful messages are combined with jokes, space travel and real life events. This book has over 100 contributions from well known authors and illustrators and my children loved finding work by people they feel they know. This book helps the reader escape and in our home it helped us to laugh, wonder, question, debate and inspire. It gave us hope and gave us a sense of order and calm.

Thank you Katherine Rundell for editing this book. It has made a difference to my children during this pandemic. Thank you Bloomsbury and NetGalley for this ARC.

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I chose this book because Stephanie Burgis had written a small part of it, and it seemed generally appealing. As suggested in the introduction, I dipped in and out of it over the course of the two weeks I had before release day.

I find it difficult to write a review for a book that contains so many, very different, tiny stories, illustrations and poems. I enjoyed some more than others, but every single one of them has something to teach us about hope. Some are touching, a few made me cry, many made me smile or laugh. If you are struggling, or having dark moments, I definitely recommend dipping into this book, and feeling many other humans reaching out to say you are not alone, don’t give up, the world may be full of darkness, but there is much light too.

I was given a free copy of this book, my opinions are my own.

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It’s lovely to see this anthology in print. This is exactly what we need, a bit more hope in our lives,! This breeze of hope coming from such wonderful writers makes the message powerful and strong. There are a great range of stories, poems and illustrations all beautifully written and designed. This project was organised by Katherine Rundell and this book was already available for free, however; having this resource in print is great too and it’s wonderful to know that part of the sale is going to be donated to NHS. Highly recommend.

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