I love Benjamin Zephaniah
The power and beauty of his words
Strike hard at the heart
He has a wonderful storytelling voice
That carries great emotion
And adds layers of depth
That help you truly empathise with characters
And the situations they find themselves in

Windrush Child is a brilliant and beautiful book
It tells the story of Leonard
A child of the Windrush Generation
We follow him and his family from Jamaica
To Manchester, England
Through the story of one family
We can begin to understand what it was like
For the people who came to England
And did not receive the warm welcome they had hoped for
We follow Leonard from the age of 10
To when he is a grown man, a father of a grown woman
And is denied citizenship by the country he has lived in his whole life
A heartbreaking but all too familiar example of the Windrush scandal

Through Leonard and his parents
We see what families gave up to come and help England after the war
What and who they left behind
We see the pain they endured as they built a new life here
The bullying, the prejudice, the racism
I cried a lot reading this book
With sadness and empathy and shame
At how people of the Windrush Generation
Were and are treated
They came to help rebuild England
They came with hopes and dreams for a better future
And we literally kicked them in the teeth
And shattered their hopes and dreams
But still the people stayed
And they worked hard
They fought for the better life
While rebuilding England after the war
We owe this generation a huge thank you
And a HUGE apology for how they were treated
And sadly, how many still are treated
Windrush Child made me really think about our history
Made me determined to read more, learn more
And be part of a change going forward
This is a story I will be reading and discussing with my children
And recommending that other parents and educators do the same

This is a story of courage and resilience
Of love and loss
It is a tale of identity and belonging
This is an unsung story from the past
From our history
A story to get us to stop and think
And talk to one another about our history
About racism
Fairness
Human rights

Windrush Child
A story of a boy far from home
Learning to enjoy his new life
When everything seems against him