Review of the ˜Feel Brave Teaching Guide™ by Avril McDonald:

With the importance of PSHE and the need to discuss feelings and other matters relevant to all children comes this excellently well produced teachers™ book. It details an approach to teaching PSHE through stories in five accompanying sympathetically illustrated children™s books. The themes covered in the stories include loss of a loved one (The Grand Wolf), how to deal with people who are unkind (The Wolfs Colourful Coat), worries (The Wolf and the Baby Dragon), fears (The Wolf and the Shadow Monster), and being left out (The Wolf is Not Invited). The text of each story is included in the teachers™ book, as is a CD which has everything too, including emotions cards and yoga pose cards. Links are made to other curricular areas such as Religion, DT and Science with plentiful suggestions for activities. All in all, an excellent resource for the KSl classroom, and also for EYFS.



Rudolph Loewenstein, The School Librarian Vol. 65 No.1 Spring 2017.

Review of ˜Don™t Send Him In Tomorrow™™ by Jarlath O™Brien:

Jarlath O™Brien is an experienced head teacher currently working in a special school but also with extensive experience working with students with learning difficulties and special need in the mainstream schools. The author™s background gives immense authority to this much-needed consideration of the ways irr-which our education system fails students with additional needs. O™Brien writes with great passion, exposing the policy decisions which lead to the marginalisation of young people. The focus on anecdotes shows how children and their families struggle to ensure that needs are met and educational entitlements received.

O™Brien acknowledges that lack of knowledge is often at the core of poor decision-making relating to individual needs and seeks to address this by including very clear factual sections on many of the conditions associated with learning difficulties. The book also includes viable suggestions for how individual members of staff and schools can work within the present constraints to ensure that pupils thrive.



˜Don™t Send Him in Tomorrow™ is an important book because it does much more than show how professionals can help. It highlights recent policies which have further disadvantaged students with additional needs and argues powerfully for changes which are needed. O™Brien shows us that we must challenge legislation to ensure that our education system is humane and inclusive.

Jaki Brien, The School Librarian Vol. 65 No.1 Spring 2017.