The Children’s Laureate’s powerful account of how we’re failing children – and what we can do to address that.
This moving, insightful account of childhood in the Britain of today begins with a typically jaw-dropping moment. Cottrell-Boyce – bestselling author of children’s books such as Millions, and now Children’s Laureate – is visiting a primary school in Liverpool, where the head teacher briefs him on some useful dos and don’ts:
- Do wear an audio device to amplify your voice for the girl who is hard of hearing.
- Don’t mention death and destruction because another child has just lost a parent.
- ‘Oh, and maybe don’t go on about the summer holidays. They hate them [because] they miss school.’
The idea that children don’t look forward to school holidays astonishes Cottrell-Boyce, at least the first time he hears it said. For one thing, it has long been deeply embedded in our culture that school is a thing to escape – in everything from the summertime adventures of the Famous Five to the song ‘School’s Out’.
But Cottrell-Boyce then hears the same idea repeated, and sees with his own eyes the transformation of schools into safe havens for our children – because other support structures have been stripped back by austerity, Covid and the cost-of-living crisis. For too many children, schools are a last-standing refuge.
What follows is his exploration of this change – causes, effects and possible solutions. He listens to children affected, to teachers and volunteer groups tackling extraordinary challenges, and he shares their stories. Into this, he adds his own insights, childhood memories and other reflections, drawing connections.
The ten chapters each take as their cue a classic work of or character from children’s literature. In the opening chapter, he uses The Thousand and One Nights to talk about the power of bedtime stories, of reading to children, and then the problem of furniture poverty where children don’t even have beds.
In 2025 alone, the charity Time for Bed gave out 582 free beds in the Merseyside area. The initiative grew out of the larger End Furniture Poverty project, which repurposes donated furniture. As the staff told Cottrell-Boyce, people don’t tend to donate beds anyway, and a new flat-pack bed set has a positive effect on recipients, feeling more like a gift, a treat, than charity.
He follows this with a chapter using The Very Hungry Caterpillar to explore the impact of the loss of early years programmes. Another chapter uses The Wizard of Oz to explore the effect of moving home in childhood, which some families must do over and again. There’s a chapter using Mike Teevee from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to discuss children watching videos on YouTube… It is by turns funny and moving, and in a particularly powerful moment, his empathy extends to the culprit of a notorious murder.
The book covers a lot of ground, and a lot of social problems, but Cottrell-Boyce is extremely good on vivid, powerful images that convey his themes and ideas. In this, I think he follows in a long tradition of socially conscious writers: more than a century ago, the writer HG Wells used an image from his own impoverished childhood – a pair of ill-fitting boots – to explain the long-term effects of poverty, physically and mentally (‘The Misery of Boots’ (1905)).
It’s a campaigning book in that same tradition, and for all the harrowing experience charted here, it is inspiring.
A British Childhood: How Our Children Live Now by Frank Cottrell-Boyce is published by Picador, price £14.99.
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