Hope Wins: A Collection of Inspiring Stories for Young Readers

Hope Wins is a collection of true stories for 8 year olds, written by children's authors about the times in their own childhoods when hope got them through.

What happens

They're short, chatty pieces, and each one reads like the author is sitting across the table telling you about it.

Christina Soontornvat grew up in her family's Thai restaurant in a small Texas town. On her very first day on the till, aged twelve, she charged a customer a hundred times too much. Her mum sorted it out, and was proud of her for keeping calm (she calls it being a duck).

She's also honest about the racist names she was called at school. There's a really moving bit about how her dad answered one family's rudeness by serving them the best meal in town.

Adam Gidwitz spent years desperate to be friends with the cool kids. A whole class once chanted at him for wearing the wrong T-shirt. Then he spent a year on purpose with no friends at all, and found out what he actually liked.

Gordon Korman wrote his first novel for a seventh-grade English project, set by the running coach who was covering the class. By the time it came out, he was already at high school.

And James Bird remembers his family's car dying in the middle of a motorway at midnight, the day they lost their home.

The best thing about it is how much these grown-ups remember. The jealousy, the teasing and the waiting are all there. Which child doesn't need to hear that a famous author was once the kid nobody picked?

Some of it is heavy, so it's good to know what's coming. There's racism, eviction and living with very little money. There's a lorry heading straight for that broken-down car in the dark, and one author's uncle died of cancer. Nothing is graphic, but a sensitive eight-year-old might like to read these ones with you.

It's a lovely one to dip into for a reader who's thinking about being a writer one day. It's easy to read a story at bedtime and talk about it.

What to read next

If Gordon Korman's piece goes down well, Gordon Korman's Unplugged is in the library too. It's about a spoilt tech billionaire's son packed off to a wellness retreat in the Arkansas woods.