Fiction featuring Care Experience The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (Paperback) Gabrielle Zevin 2023 A.J. Fikry, the grumpy owner of Island Books, is going through a hard time: his bookshop is failing, he has lost his beloved wife, and his prized possession - a rare first edition book has been stolen. Over time, he has given up on people, and even the books in his store, instead of offering solace, are yet another reminder of a world that is changing too rapidly. But one day A.J. finds two-year-old Maya sitting on the bookshop floor, with a note attached to her asking the owner to look after her. His life - and Maya's - is changed forever. External Website

Authors B But We All Shine On ➝ Blood Relatives ➝ The agency accused of paying bribes for babies ➝ Baroness Lola Young: From foster care to the House of Lords ➝ Peter Bell and the singular quest of Kyung Ae ➝ Bluebells on Bunny Hill ➝ Series 4 Episode 1 ➝ The mums accused of poisoning their kids ➝ Brian Cox on The Book Shelf with Ryan Tubridy ➝ Alan Warner: Movern Callar ➝ Barry Keoghan ➝ The orphan hero: George King ➝ Charlotte Brontë - Jane Eyre ➝ Darcey & Chloe - How the system failed to save two baby girls ➝ Stacey Halls ➝ The kids who broke out of detention ➝ More to the story... Meeting your mum as an adult ➝ Mother of Lion, Sue Brierley, tells her story ➝ Foundling: Found - a new podcast series ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness, to The Blind Side, and Beyond Michael Oher 2012 The football star made famous in the hit film (and book) The Blind Side reflects on how far he has come from the circumstances of his youth. ooking back on how he went from being a homeless child in Memphis to playing in the NFL, Michael talks about the goals he had to break out of the cycle of poverty, addiction, and hopelessness that trapped his family. Eventually he grasped onto football as his ticket out and worked hard to make his dream into a reality. With his adoptive family, the Touhys, and other influential people in mind, he describes the absolute necessity of seeking out positive role models and good friends who share the same values to achieve one's dreams. External Website

Authors T Alan Turing ➝ Back to Top

Authors D Singer, entertainer, Australian ➝ Sierra Leonean-American Ballet dancer ➝ Back to Top

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Kazuo Ishiguro Reflects on Never Let Me Go, 20 Years Later Literary Hub 2005 In this LitHub article, Kazuo Ishiguro writes about his motivation and influences for writing the novel Never Let Me Go (2005), including Dolly the Sheep and young writers willing to challenge what it means to write literary fiction. External Website

Films/Videos The Unforgivable 2021 The Unforgivable (2021) starring Sandra Bullock covers kinship and foster care. The film is based on the 2009 miniseries, Unforgiven, written by Sally Wainwright. Sandra Bullock plays Ruth Slater who has served time for a violent crime and is now desperately trying to get her life back on track. She's also trying to locate her sister, Katie, but the child protection system isn't helpful and the foster parents would prefer Katie not be told anything about her past. The film explores the topic of how some people are willing to give a former prisoner a second chance, but many others arent. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Winter Solstice Rosamund Pilcher 2000 A loosely connected group end up spending advent together in a house in Scotland. One of them Lucy is an unhappy teenager. By the end of the novel it has been agreed that she will live with her new found family for the next few months, but it is implied that she will actually stay there until she is an adult. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignacius Sancho Paterson Joseph 2022 The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignacius Sancho is Paterson Joseph's debut novel. and tells the story of the first Black man in England who could vote - because he owned property. Charles Ignatius Sancho (c1729-1780) who was born on a slave ship in the Atlantic, orphaned at the age of 2, and then 'gifted' to 3 sisters in Greenwich, England. Sancho lived with the sisters for 18 years then year away. He was taken in by John Montagu who educated the young man. Sancho ended up becoming a shopkeeper and involved in the abolitionist movement. He wrote essays, at least one book and 2 plays, and he composed music. External Website

Television Shows The Haunting of Bly Manor 2020 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James has been adapted numerous times for film and television and in literature. The most recent of these adaptations appears to be the Netflix 2020 one when the novella was adapted as The Hunting of Bly Manor for the second season of Mike Flanagan's The Haunting anthology series. External Website

Authors H Jim Hoffmaster ➝ Tiffany Haddish ➝ Lena Horne (actor) ➝ Back to Top

Authors M AUS, Singer, Songwriter ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Birdcage Library Freya Berry 2023 The Birdcage Library (2023) by British-Indian novelist Freya Berry was inspired by explorer Freya Stark (1893-1993) after whom she was named. In 1932 botanist Emily Blackwood takes a job cataloguing a collection of taxidermied animals for collector 92 year old Henry Vogel who lives in a remote Scottish castle named Parras. Henry Vogel & his brother, Charles, were children when they left Germany for the USA. In New York they “set up as animal dealers” becoming so successful they were able to set up an emporium. The Henry & Charles Vogel characters are based on Charles Reiche (1827-1885) & his brother Henry Reiche (1833-1887). After emigrating to the USA from Germany, they set up an animal trading business. Charles was 17 years old, and Henry only 11. While going about her cataloguing job, Emily Blackwood discovers pages of a diary hidden in the castle. The diary was written by Hester Vogel, who was married to Charles Vogel but who had disappeared decades ago. Emily finds out that Hester was born in the Parras castle. Her parents were so angry that their daughter was pregnant to a “lowly cage-maker” that they banished Hester’s parents and raised their granddaughter in the castle. After her mother died when Hester was 9, her father arrives at the castle & takes his daughter to live in a small town near Boston External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Entitlement Rumaan Alam 2024 Entitlement (2024) by American writer, Rumaan Alam, is a novel about money and morality. The protagonist is Brooke, a young African American woman who was adopted by a white woman. Brooke doesn’t need anything, but she wants a lot, including to impress her mother. She takes on a job helping an elderly billionaire given away his huge fortune and it’s not long before she decides she should be the recipient of that fortune. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Are care leavers really more likely to go to prison than university? – ExChange Neil Harrison 2019 In this blog, academic Neil Harrison challenges what he calls the 'factoid' that care leavers are more likely to end up prison instead of at university. External Website

Writers Harriet Martineau 1802-1876 Harriet Martineau (1802 – 1876) was an English social theorist and Whig writer often seen as the first female sociologist. She was sent away from home to stay with relatives a number of times during her childhood, primarily for health reasons. In 1829, Harriet Martineau took on the task of financially providing for her family when their textile business failed, an event she saw as positive. She sold her needlework, and she began selling articles to the Monthly Repository, a Unitarian magazine. Illustrations of Political Economy established Harriet Martineau financially and as a writer. This was a series of 24 stories published between 1832 and 1834, at a rate of 1 every month with 10,000 copies of each sold and many more read. Both Society in America and How to Observe are considered to be significant early contributions to the new field of sociology, and in 1853 Martineau translated the work of August Comte—founder of sociology—a translation Comte recommended to his students. A sustained interest of Martineau’s was women and their work. She wanted women to be able to legally keep their wages rather than hand them over to their husbands, and she crusaded for good working conditions for needlewomen. Harriet Martineau was often ill with 2 long periods between 1839 and 1844 and between 1855 and 1876. Despite this, she is regarded as one of the most prolific writers of the 19th century. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Little Strangers: Portrayals of Adoption and Foster Care in America, 1850-1929 Claudia Nelson 2003 When Massachusetts passed America’s first comprehensive adoption law in 1851, the usual motive for taking in an unrelated child was presumed to be the need for cheap labor. But by 1929―the first year that every state had an adoption law―the adoptee’s main function was seen as emotional. Little Strangers examines the representations of adoption and foster care produced over the intervening years. Claudia Nelson argues that adoption texts reflect changing attitudes toward many important social issues, including immigration and poverty, heredity and environment, individuality and citizenship, gender, and the family. She examines orphan fiction for children, magazine stories and articles, legal writings, social work conference proceedings, and discussions of heredity and child psychology. Nelson’s ambitious scope provides for an analysis of the extent to which specialist and mainstream adoption discourse overlapped, as well as the ways in which adoption and foster care had captivated the public imagination. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Language of Flowers Vanessa Diffenbaugh 2012 The Victorians used flowers to express emotions: honeysuckle for devotion, azaleas for passion, and red roses for love. For Victoria Jones, flowers and their meanings are her only connection to the world – although for her, they are most useful in expressing feelings such as grief, mistrust and solitude. After a childhood in the foster care system, Victoria – now eighteen – has nowhere to go, and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own. When her talent is discovered by a local florist, she discovers her gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But it takes a meeting with a mysterious vendor at the flower market for her to realize what's been missing in her own life. As she starts to fall for him, though, she must confront a painful secret from her past – and decide whether it's worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness. External Website

Television Shows The Good Witch's Wonder 2020 The Good Witch's Wonder is a 2014 Canadian/American family film and Hallmark Channel original movie written by G. Ross Parker and directed by Craig Pryce. The film stars Catherine Bell as Cassandra "Cassie" Nightingale whose parents died when she was a child and who grows up in the US foster care system. Cassie became accustomed to travelling and moving as she was passed through foster homes. She ran away and continued travelling the world and learning about many different cultures, all the while honing her special gifts. Cassie is psychic and uses her intuition (and at times, a little magic) for good reasons. Also starring Chris Potter, Hannah Endicott-Douglas, Matthew Knight, Peter MacNeill, Rachel Wilson and Paul Popowich. Wonder, is the seventh film in The Good Witch film series. Cassie Nightingale (Catherine Bell) anticipating big changes as she hands over the town's mayoral reins to her friend Martha Tinsdale (Catherine Disher) and prepares for her stepson's wedding to his fiancée, Tara (Ashley Leggat). External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is the best-known novel of the 4 written by African American writer Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960). The novel tells the story of Janie Crawford who was raised in the kinship care of her maternal grandmother, Nanny. Janie Crawford is a confident, middle-aged Black woman who returns to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida after being away for years. She explains that she was raised by her grandmother, who, influenced by her life as a slave and what happened to her daughter, wants Janie to marry an older man, a farmer named Logan Killicks, who can provide Janie with security and social states. But Jane is miserable with Logan and runs off with another man. According to the Zora Neale Hurston website: “When first published in 1937, this novel about a proud, independent black woman was generally dismissed by male reviewers. Out of print for almost thirty years, but since its reissue…in 1978, Their Eyes Were Watching God has become the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.” External Website