Sue Pickford Cheung

It was a privilege to work with BookTrust, the UK’s largest children’s reading charity, and visit some of the more disadvantaged schools in the UK, to help them bring the benefits of reading to those who need it the most. Every student in year 7s got a copy of my book Chinglish, donated to them by the trust.

The schools I went to were around Leicester, where less than 50% of pupils (including asylum seekers) across the city are ethnically white. There’s evidence that mixed schools boost positive attitudes between pupils of different ethnicities, meaning they’ll develop more empathy as adults.