Choose Love

In this moving sequence of poems Nicola Davies's text combines with the superbly evocative illustrations of Petr Horácek to provide insight into the real-life experiences of refugees forced to leave their homes and previous lives behind to face an unknown future. Suffused with compassion and understanding, the work invites you to share in these stories in the hope of building greater awareness and empathy for the struggles faced by so many, and to choose love as our response. AUTHOR: Nicola Davies trained as a zoologist and studied bats and whales in the wild before joining the BBC Natural History Unit as a researcher and presenter of programmes such as The Really Wild Show. She became a children's author when her own children were in school and has written more than 80 books for children, fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Her work has won awards around the world and been published in more than twelve different languages. Although her work focuses mainly on the natural world, she has a strong interest in the welfare of children and has written books addressing issues such as grief, disability, bullying and children's rights. Petr Horácek was born in Czechoslovakia and grew up on the outskirts of Prague. From the age of 15-19 he studied at the High School of Art in Prague, which specialised mainly in design. From age 19 Petr worked in a state design studio for two years, then studied painting at the Academy of Fine Art in Prague from 1988, graduating with a Master of Fine Art degree in 1994. As a student he met his English wife Claire and in 1995 they moved to England. Petr started to write and illustrate books soon after his first child was born. The first of these, Strawberries are Red and What is Black and White?, were published in 2001, and he received the Books For Children Newcomer Award in the same year. Since then Petr has written and illustrated many books for children, including a previous collaboration with Nicola Davies, A First Book of Animals, and has been translated into many languages, as well as winning awards for his books in Britain, the USA and Holland.

Commended for CLiPPA 2023

Choose Love is a beautifully produced collection of poems by Nicola Davies, featuring illustrations by Petr Horáček. As an incredibly prolific author for children, Davies is experienced in keeping her message direct, simple, and emotive for younger readers. While not explicitly a children’s book, Choose Love is as simple and direct as the title implies; the phrase acts as both a call to action and a reference to the refugee charity with which Davies worked in the book’s creation. The sentiment of choosing love resonates throughout the poems in the collection and is as suitable for younger readers as it is for the more mature. There is no age limit on compassion and empathy.Loosely following the journey of a refugee, the book contains three brief sections entitled ‘Departure’, ‘Arrival’, and ‘Healing’. The effect of this is to build a narrative that humanises the refugee experience and creates a relatable description of different elements of life leading to the seeking of asylum. At a time when the press is endlessly full of antagonistic articles that reduce the plight of refugees to politicised statistics and turns them into problems to be dealt with, this book is more important than ever. Davies has taken her experience of working directly with refugees to counter the ‘othering’ of the media and places the reader in a position where it’s hard to remain anything but open and sympathetic.In ‘Five Minutes’, Davies deals with the decisions made quickly when leaving home:‘You’ve got five minutes, what will you chooseFrom all that you’re about to lose?You’ve got five minutes to fill your arms,When the city shrieks with fire alarms.’The power of Davies’s directness continues in ‘Mathematics’, a poem that mimics the format of a school maths puzzle. ‘Two hundred on a tiny boat / Forty drowned when it won’t float.’ She goes on, ‘Countless corpses in the sea / This is the maths of misery.’Two highlights of this book are ‘The Interview’ and ‘Hope’. The former paints a picture of an asylum seeker’s ‘substantive interview’, the moment when the reasons for asylum are examined and scrutinised. It manages to be both educational and illuminating about those on either side of the table. The latter reads as an experience of a teacher witnessing a moment of frustration that results in a glimmer of hope for a refugee child in the form of a green sprout from a sunflower seed.Horáček’s illustration for ‘Hope’ is representative of the style throughout the book and adds to the power of the words. His style is impressionistic, and with ‘Hope’ the smallest smear of green on grey is enough to strengthen Davies’s message. Together, the poems and illustrations make this book as beautiful as it is powerful.Choose Love should be widely read and shared. Its message holds as much power for good as the organisation it’s been written to support. -- Liam Nolan @

Nicola Davies is the author of more than 80 books including picture books, non-fiction, fiction and poetry for children and adults. She has written widely on many subjects including environmental science, children's rights, disability, grief and refugees. Recently two of her titles The Day War Came and The King of the Sky were endorsed by Amnesty UK. Petr Horá cek is an award winning illustrator and author of books for children. His books include The Best Place in the World, Puffin Peter, Blue Penguin, The Greedy Goat, Silly Suzy Goose and A New House for Mouse. Petr illustrated Nicola Davies's book A First Book of Animals published by Walker Books, which was shortlisted for The Kate Greenaway Medal and in 2017 was awarded Schools Library Association Information Book Award.

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