{"id":209922,"date":"2025-04-28T03:20:01","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T03:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/entertainment\/books\/empathy-collection-and-reflections-from-anne-fine-the-federation-of-childrens-book-groups\/"},"modified":"2025-04-28T03:20:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T03:20:01","slug":"empathy-collection-and-reflections-from-anne-fine-the-federation-of-childrens-book-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=209922","title":{"rendered":"Empathy Collection and Reflections from Anne Fine \u2013 The Federation of Children’s Book Groups"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

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Today\u2019s blog is from our friends at Empathy Lab and Anne Fine, writing about empathy and the upcoming Empathy Festival. Read on and get involved!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jump into someone else\u2019s story<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 2025 Read for Empathy Collection and reflections from Anne Fine<\/p>\n

The Read for Empathy book collection created by EmpathyLab is an annual event which celebrates the power of books to build children\u2019s empathy. Selected by a panel of \u2018judges\u2019 drawn from the children\u2019s book and education worlds, titles are assessed against empathy-boosting criteria such as the quality of the characterisation, the book\u2019s ability to challenge tribal thinking and how it supports the development of key empathy skills such as perspective-taking.<\/p>\n

The 2025 collection contains 70 titles \u2013 40 in the primary list and 30 in the secondary list, ranging from picture books to graphic novels and poetry to young adult novels. EmpathyLab are proud of the diversity of the collection, and also that it includes new and emerging talents as well as a number of eminent children\u2019s authors. We were so excited this year to include much-loved author and former Children\u2019s Laureate, Anne Fine, whose latest book On the Wall is a quirkily funny and tender story of one child\u2019s impact on those around him. The judges felt that it speaks as much to adults as to children, and it\u2019s a book that will stay with all who read it. In her article below, Anne shares her reflections on empathy in the story.<\/p>\n

Discover the 2025 Read for Empathy collection and accompanying guides at empathylab.uk\/rfe\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For FREE resources and to take part in the Empathy Day Festival, running from 2-12 June, register at empathylab.uk\/empathy-day\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Blog post from Anne Fine<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why has the sheer importance of empathy come to the fore in recent years? Why do we care so much about a concept that had seemed to be left to itself for so long?<\/p>\n

Perhaps because there has been so much change and upheaval for our young people in recent years, leaving so many isolated from what we might term \u2018real\u2019 contact with others. Lockdown was for many a disaster. The proliferation of phones hasn\u2019t helped. Financially stretched families are often starved of time that can be spent in casual, easy, contact with one another.<\/p>\n

So, gaining an understanding of others from fiction has become more and more important. Children have always learned from the books and stories they are offered. From the fairy tales, children who lived in an elemental world without luxuries or social safety nets learned the virtues that were so necessary back then to survival: courage, resourcefulness, endurance, quick wits, kindness to strangers.<\/p>\n

Our own young people live more tightly under separate roofs, and we have seen the language of books change accordingly \u2013 to Mum, the babysitter, playgroup, park, baby sister, Dad\u2019s girlfriend, the bully, happy, worried, sad. It\u2019s the language of relationships and emotions now, and understanding and compassion liberate. They have become the twenty-first century equivalent of Hansel and Gretel\u2019s pebbles gleaming in the moonlight to show the way out of the dark forest.<\/p>\n

Frank Flanagan once said good writers \u201cstructure, explain and evaluate the experience of childhood and empower the child to come to terms with it. They enable the child to lead a full life.\u201d<\/p>\n

How? Partly by quite unconsciously increasing self-knowledge and self-awareness. A young reader can\u2019t help but see characters in books unconsciously as if in a mirror. \u201cI\u2019m not like that.\u201d \u201cI worry about that too.\u201d \u201cI would have been braver\u201d, \u201cslower to catch on\u201d, \u201ctempted to be more mean\u201d. And when this sense comes of no longer being the only one in the world to have this problem, or to feel that way, the child not only comes to realise that they are not alone, but also to gather insights into how other people deal with the same worries or tackle the same problems. In short, they learn, vicariously, how other people tick.<\/p>\n

We have so many young people who, it seems, sometimes as a result of their upbringing, often simply by nature, have somehow failed to acquire the tools to begin to think about their own situation. Through fiction they can often begin, safely, to explore the more subtle aspects of life around them \u2013 an insight into someone else\u2019s life. A child can share desk space with someone else all year and yet learn less about them than about a character in one short book that\u2019s read to them at night. I try to show this in my novel On the Wall, where, over the school year, Finley\u2019s quite exceptional gift for tranquillity and self-acceptance in an anxiety-inducing world causes one fellow pupil after another to look more deeply into themselves, and learn how to rebalance their own way of thinking to become, in the process, calmer, happier, or more accepting.<\/p>\n

We all want, for our young people, peace of mind. An excellent start is to explore Lauren Child\u2019s wonderful \u2018Staring into Space\u2019 project: https:\/\/staringintospace.me\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Then, steep them in fiction. And where better to find the best than at EmpathyLab itself?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s blog is from our friends at Empathy Lab and Anne Fine, writing about empathy and the upcoming Empathy Festival. Read on and get involved! Jump into someone else\u2019s story The 2025 Read for Empathy Collection and reflections from Anne Fine The Read for Empathy book collection created by EmpathyLab is an annual event which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":209923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[1598,2268,352,2224,20519,3723,788,3724,14721],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-209922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-anne","tag-book","tag-childrens","tag-collection","tag-empathy","tag-federation","tag-fine","tag-groups","tag-reflections"],"yoast_head":"\nEmpathy Collection and Reflections from Anne Fine \u2013 The Federation of Children's Book Groups - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=209922\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Empathy Collection and Reflections from Anne Fine \u2013 The Federation of Children's Book Groups - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today\u2019s blog is from our friends at Empathy Lab and Anne Fine, writing about empathy and the upcoming Empathy Festival. 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