BUS STOP BABY and reviews.

Cover by Thomas Flintham

Walking home from school with her sister, Eden, 13 year-old Amy finds a baby abandoned at a bus stop. She can’t believe that such a thing could happen and sets out to trace the missing mother. However, as her search develops, she realises that things are not always black and white and learns to consider the vast expanse of grey between the two.

Buy it here from Amazon

Shortlisted for the Redbridge Children’s Book Award 2017. Selected for the Whatever it Takes Reading Rampage 2017.  Selected for Bookbuzz 2018

Here’s a lovely review from the North Somerset CBG –

There are many stories about abandoned children, but this book considers the impact on the person who discovers a foundling. For Amy, it stirs up her own feelings of abandonment by her mother who left with the builder and is now living in Australia. Her quest also leads her to discover that her bus stop baby isn’t the first baby to be abandoned in the village.

Beautifully written, the book explores relationships, trust and loss. The characters are rich and well defined, making their understandings and misunderstandings seem very real. Zelda (Amy’s grandmother) is particularly well written and engaging, reminding the reader that families are as varied and different as the people that make them.

An excellent book for children looking for a challenge – something to think about and discuss- ‘Bus Stop Baby’ is a fantastic read which will stay with you long after it’s finished.

This from Minerva Moans :  …This is a gem of a book – it’s written with warmth and comes across as kindhearted and welcoming. There’s a priceless relationship between Amy and her grandmother that’s never too schmaltzy, but strikes a chord as being quite real – Amy doesn’t adore her grandmother – in fact she finds her difficult at times, but gradually as the story develops, she realises more and more that her grandmother is a person in her own right with a history, and relationships and feelings.

In fact it’s this startling awareness that sells this book. Fleur Hitchcock has drawn Amy perfectly – a young teen who is beginning to look outside herself, and beginning to realise that the world doesn’t operate in just black and white – that there is a great deal of grey space between what’s right and what’s wrong in certain situations.

The baby’s abandonment has resonance for Amy, because her own mother left her and her sister ten years ago, and the book explores the ability of the Internet to plug gaps or create them in modern life – from Amy helping Zelda to find old friends, to Amy talking to her mother in Australia via Skype, to trying to solve the mystery of the missing mother on the Internet.

With wonderful complex characterisation, and true-to-life emotions, this is a great story to provoke thought in your young tween or teen.

Here from Suffolk Libraries:  This book is perfect for fans of authors like Jacqueline Wilson or Cathy Cassidy as it deals with sensitive issues in a passionate but poignant way.

The ending for the book is sweet and hopeful, which perfectly wraps up this heart-warming story.

And here are some children’s reviews on Toppsta –