Footballer Marcus Rashford and writer Joseph Coelho are among the authors listed in the 2023 Read For Empathy book collection aimed at children.
EmpathyLab announced on Wednesday the 65 books, aimed at three to 16-year-olds, that have been chosen by expert judges for offering young people different ways of experiencing, understanding and building empathy.
The picture books, novels, poetry, non-fiction, graphic and verse novels give insights into issues like economic hardship, war, homelessness and hearing loss.
Manchester United striker Rashford’s book You Can Do It: How To Find Your Voice And Make A Difference is on the secondary school list for those aged 12 to 16.
The book, written with The Athletic writer Carl Anka, who also wrote You Are A Champion: How To Be The Best You Can Be with the England player, tells young people to surround themselves with the right team, show kindness and celebrate and champion difference.
It also draws on Rashford’s experiences campaigning, which has included pushing for low-income families to be provided with free school meals outside term time.
He has also called for the rate of universal credit to be raised and has helped get book donations to under-privileged children.
Coelho, a performance poet, playwright and children’s author who was made Waterstones Children’s Laureate in 2022, is listed for primary school children aged three to 11 for Our Tower.
Illustrated by Richard Johnson, the picture book tells the story of three children discovering the magic inside their tower block.
Other books to make the empathy list include Tyger by SF Said, Yes You Can, Cow! by Rashmi Sirdeshpande and Lisa Thompson’s Sidney Makes A Wish.
EmpathyLab’s founder Miranda McKearney, who was on the judging panel, said: “Each of the collection’s wonderful books has been chosen to do a specific empathy-building job, giving educators practical tools to raise an empathy-educated generation.
“Imagine the power of every child being inspired to learn about the importance of empathy and develop this critical life skill – the future would be in safe hands.”
The 11 other judges include school teachers and librarians.
The annual list is to be used as a guide for parents and teachers.
Michele Thomas, headteacher at Pembroke Dock Community School, said: “Pupils are seeking out injustices and using empathy to resolve differences in the classroom and playground.
“There have been fewer incidences of racism since we began our empathy journey.”
The full list for the 2023 Read for Empathy collection is available at empathylab.uk/RFE-2023
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here