1. Empathy is a human super- power which helps us all understand each other better.
It is also an essential social and emotional skill, crucial if young people are to thrive.
We’re not born with a fixed quantity of empathy – it’s a skill we can learn.
Research shows that stories are a powerful tool to develop empathy, because in identifying with book characters, we learn to see things from other points of view.
So as we read, we can build our empathy skills at the same time. Some book recommendations follow…

4. These 11 books are available in FHS school library and are recommended by
There are 100s more books in FHS library that can help you develop your empathy by reading about the lives that other people live (including some recommended by FHS teachers on the next slide).
There are also 100s of books where the characters are battling monsters, having fantastical adventures or experiencing life in the past or the future – reading these will also develop your empathy!

5. Recommended by Ms Manders
'A powerful, wrenching, and compulsively readable story that lays bare the history, and the present, of racism in America' 
John Green, bestselling author 'Absolutely incredible, honest, gut-wrenching! A must-read!' 
Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give
Recommended by Ms Tang
Set against the backdrop of the Brixton race riots in London in the 1980s, this novel tells a story of overcoming obstacles from a teen's perspective.
Brenton Brown, a 16-year-old mixed-race youth, has lived in a children's home all his life and is haunted by the absence of his mother.
Recommended by Ms Manders
Meet Stewart. He’s geeky, gifted and sees things a bit differently to most people. His mum has died and he misses her all the more now he and Dad have moved in with Ashley and her mum. Meet Ashley. She’s popular, cool and sees things very differently to her new family. Her dad has come out and moved out – but not far enough. And now she has to live with a freakazoid step-brother.
Recommended by Ms Learoyd
For every household name bringing home the big pay cheques there are hundreds of thousands of others who are struggling to make it…An insight into the hearts and minds of professional footballers…looking at everything from the intelligence of footballers and concerns about their wellbeing to how culture affects football and how parents can best support their kids.
Recommended by Mr Griffiths
Perfect for fans of THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS. This is a beautiful, vivid and deeply moving story about a refugee boy who has spent his entire life living in a detention centre.
This novel reminds us all of the importance of freedom, hope, and the power of a story to speak for anyone who's ever struggled to find a safe home.
Recommended by Ms Fitzpatrick
Roxy hates the way her brother behaves - Kaine might be brilliant at football but he's always in trouble and cares nothing about his family. And Kaine despises the way his supposedly-perfect sister, dominates their parents in her ambition to reach Wimbledon. But the twins are both hiding dangerous secrets of their own, secrets that could destroy everything they are working towards Recommended by Mr Warner

6. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well.
'In reading, you get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know.
You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well.
Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals'
Neil Gaiman
'My name is August. I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.' Auggie wants to be an ordinary ten-year-old. He does ordinary things - eating ice cream, playing on his Xbox. He feels ordinary - inside. But ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. Ordinary kids aren't stared at wherever they go.
Recommended by Mrs Hans