#ReadforEmpathy Collection 2024

Kicked Out, by A. M. Dassu, is an EmpathyLab 2024 Read for Empathy title.

EmpathyLab’s work is based on scientific research showing that empathy is learnable, and that books help to build it: identifying with fictional characters helps build real-life empathy. Teachers report that using empathy-rich texts builds mutual understanding. Impacts include improved behaviour and a culture with less racism and in which children themselves help resolve disputes.

Empathy Day will be celebrated on 6th June 2024. Find out more here.

Read more about Kicked Out here

Publishing March 2024

Shortlisted for the New Zealand Book of the Year, YA Fiction

Kate De Goldi’s love of language and Christchurch shine through in this exquisite novel about faith, love and loss.’ – shortlist citation

New Zealand author Kate De Goldi first came to the attention of the UK reading public with The 10pm Question, New Zealand Post Book of the Year. Eddy, Eddy demonstrates the same unparalleled empathy with the torturred mind of a teenager, in this case traumatised by earthquake and family tragedy. But the story is quirky and funny; no-one handles language as deftly.

Eddy is a deep teenaged sigh come to life... With his love of literature and classical music, Eddy is an old soul, but tempered with the right and normal concerns of young people: love, sex, beer, and the teenaged boy's physical inability to give voice to a feeling. Circumstances contrive to make Eddy spill the emotional beans, and there are many of them. If an eddy is an area of swirling water that forms behind an obstacle, like a boulder in a river, then this boy is that. We'll travel with him, whilst he overcomes. – New Zealand Herald

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Eco-fiction for 9 - 13 yrs

Learning about pollinators

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