On Loneliness by The School of Life

In this book we meet various people, see their portraits and hear their stories. Many stories come from hardship, trials life has dealt them to deal with and range from isolation due to illness, losing family, friends, coming out, going to prison etc, really hard hitting issues that can turn life as you know it upside down. At the same time though, showing loneliness affects anyone and everyone no matter gender, sexuality, age it doesn't define but instils one very good point, connection can happen in real life or online, daily living a simple smile can start a conversation developing connection and we should all judge each other less.

Lily Alone by Jacqueline Wilson

When Lily's mum goes away on holiday with her new boyfriend, she supposedly leaves Lily's brother Baxter's dad in charge of the kids, though he never turns up.

Lily is only eleven and has to be Lilymum as she calls herself when looking after the siblings, Pixie, Bliss and Baxter who are all younger. As they her teacher come knocking getting suspicious when Lily isn't in school for three days and can't see her mum, he grows suspicious and so Lily takes herself and the others to camp out in the local park.

It's very dangerous as they stay there and forage for food whilst trying not to get noticed and even resort to desperate enough measures they have to sneak into someone's house and try to steal food!

As well as that, Bliss climbs a tree and gets into serious trouble as the branch prepares to snap, changing their lives in many ways as their mum turns up, arrested by the police and social workers split Lily from her beloved siblings.

Lily may have day dreamed about living alone when she's older, but she would do anything for her siblings as she does when she's forced into this horrible situation. All about neglect and not coping on her mum's half as she herself wants to just be a kid in some ways and her own idea of fun. It was a gripping read seeing how the children survived as they lived wild in a public park where it is obviously unsafe to stay.

Can I Tell You About Loneliness? by Julian Stern

In this book, set up for seven to thirteen year olds, we hear from Jan's perspective of how he feels when he's suffering from loneliness.

Jan is an eleven year old and describes how he feels in varying situations from at home, school, weekend clubs and when he's alone. His emotions when he's lonely vary from, worrying, nervous to feeling sad and cut off from everyone around him until the feeling passes.

It is common and totally okay to feel lonely!

It's natural and we will all feel loneliness one way or another and it will effect us in some way or form from situations we find ourselves in during our lives. It's easy to let fear of judgement win, but we all fit in somewhere and whether your interests are books, drawing, sports, music etc, there's people out there who love your favourite activity as much as you do too!

This book is here to show children that it's normal and to reassure them as they grow up too during these few years a lot of changes will be happening in emotions and hormones so that will probably cause more intensely felt emotions as well.

Many thanks to the publishers for allowing me to review this book for them!