(Image: OSCAR's)
A charity set up in memory of a York schoolboy has launched a new children’s book.
OSCAR’s Paediatric Brain Tumour Charity has announced the new book, When Oscar Lost His Feathers, created to help young children understand a brain tumour diagnosis.
The book was co-written by children’s author Elizabeth Green and Phil Martinez, OSCAR’s charity manager and a former primary school teacher.
It is a gentle, child-friendly story created to help young children who have been diagnosed with a brain tumour, and can also help support the siblings, friends and adults who care for them.
OSCAR’s, which supports young people affected by brain tumours and their families, said it launched the book “in response to what families told us they needed”.
All proceeds of the book will go towards continuing the work of OSCAR's.
The charity was founded by Ian and Marie Hughes in memory of their nine-year-old son, Oscar Hughes, who died in 2014 from a brain tumour.
In 2020, Ian also died of a brain tumour and a few days after Ian’s funeral his son, four-year-old Milo, was diagnosed with the same disease and died a year later.
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Phil, Oscar’s former schoolteacher, has continued to visit schools supporting children affected by brain tumours.
He said the charity works with nearly 150 families and “one of the hardest parts of a child’s diagnosis is finding the right words – particularly for younger children, siblings and schoolmates – to explain what is happening”.
Holly Dixon, mum to George, four, who was diagnosed with a brain tumour, said the book would help explain the disease to her son.
“George has recently started asking questions when he looks at pictures about the tubes in his nose and tummy,” she said. “This gives me a beautiful way to explain it to him without it being too overwhelming or frightening.”
George reads When Oscar Lost His Feathers
(Image: OSCAR's)
Lauren Turner, mum to Rosie, five, who was diagnosed with a brain tumour, added: “This book is perfect. It has such a gentle way of explaining things to younger children.
“I wish we had had something like this when Rosie was first diagnosed.”
When Oscar Lost His Feathers, which was funded by the National Lottery, is available via Amazon.
An audio version of the book narrated by Nicholas Ralph, who stars as James Herriot in Channel 5’s All Creatures Great and Small, is also available.
OSCAR’s said it is asking bookshops and libraries which want to stock copies of the book to get in touch.