AFTER half a million people have fled their homes due to Typhoon Hagupit, drawings and paintings by the UK’s best young artists, including a pupil of St Leonards C of E Primary School, Exeter, were published in a new picture book entitled The Day The Wind Blew.

The new book is the culmination of a UK-wide illustration competition jointly launched by disaster relief charity ShelterBox and national charity The Reading Agency’s Chatterbooks network of children’s reading groups. The book has already enjoyed endorsement from top authors.

Amelia Ryder-Potter, who recently left St Leonards C of E Primary School, Exeter has an illustration featured in the book.

The Day The Wind Blew – unveiled at a special event in London yesterday at the Free Word Centre – is the latest in a series of books that vividly bring to life natural and man-made disasters, helping primary school age children to express their feelings and explore their responses to world news. 27 children’s illustrations are included in the book, coming from all around the UK including Scotland, and also from children of British service personnel posted in Germany.

This is the fifth annual illustration competition organised by the two charities, which each year has focussed on a different type of disaster that ShelterBox has responded to: this year’s theme is ‘hurricane’. After Hagupit made landfall last Saturday, and over a year after Haiyan, ShelterBox is working in the Philippines to help make vulnerable communities more resilient to such violent and destructive weather.

This year’s illustration competition has been spearheaded once again by renowned author and illustrator Michael Foreman, who created his own evocative image to publicise the competition and selected the winning entries along with author Claire White.

The Day The Wind Blew tells the story of children who battle their way to school through strong breezes that grow into a hurricane, finally leaving them trapped in their classroom and destroying their village. Ingeniously, the children use debris from the storm to make kites to attract help, and as their community is slowly able to rebuild their homes, the kites become a symbol of hope.

Michael Foreman, who also treated the young winners to a unique illustration workshop at today’s book launch event, said: “Yet again, the results of our competition show that young people’s imaginations are boundless. They capture the fear, the thunder and power of an immense storm, but also the community spirit that gives families the strength to rebuild.”

Former British Children’s Laureate and War Horse author Michael Morpurgo OBE, in a special message for the endpaper of The Day The Wind Blew writes: “ShelterBox reaches out across the world to care and comfort, to protect and shelter, those who need it most, from war and wind, flood and famine.”

The competition was once again actively promoted across The Reading Agency’s Chatterbooks network of children’s reading groups. It challenged teachers and children to explore a story about the devastation that a hurricane can wreak, and bring it to life with their pictures, giving them a unique opportunity to understand how a disaster like this might affect families and communities involved.

At yesterday’s event, Rebecca Swist, a Shelterbox response team volunteer, desribed working with local volunteers to help put up 500 tents in just six days, to help house people Philippines who had list their homes, including a woman called Gina, whose total worldly possessions following the storms fitted into a single plastic bag.

• The Day The Wind Blew can be bought from the ShelterBox online shop www.shelterboxshop.org.uk/ Launched in 2001, Chatterbooks is now the largest network of reading groups for children aged 4 – 12 years: over 10,000 young readers around the UK are now part of over 800 Chatterbooks groups. They are run in libraries, schools and other settings by librarians, teachers, teaching assistants, or anyone with a passion for reading. Bestselling children’s author Jacqueline Wilson is the official Chatterbooks ambassador.

At each Chatterbooks session children talk about what they are reading, take part in fun activities inspired by the best children's books, and choose new books to take home and read. Because the Chatterbooks network is supported by The Reading Agency’s publisher partners and many children's authors and illustrators, Chatterbooks groups get access to offers, competitions, opportunities to find out how authors are inspired to create their work, together with advice and support on running a group.

Lynne Taylor, Chatterbooks programme manager at The Reading Agency says: “We are proud to support the publication of The Day The Wind Blew. It’s wonderful to see how children in schools and Chatterbooks groups have responded to the ShelterBox competition with their striking illustrations. Reading about tropical storms, and talking about how they have affected people’s lives, helps children to understand the importance of ShelterBox’s work.”

Alison Wallace, chief executive of ShelterBox, says, “In all the work we do across disaster relief, it is important never to lose sight of the child’s perspective. Young people are among the most vulnerable in any disaster zone, and they have particular needs that we make every effort to meet. So, it is both relevant and refreshing to get an insight into how children here in the UK look at such events.

"These drawings and paintings capture a range of emotions, but the one that shines out to me is compassion – an important emotion to develop early in life. This co-operative venture with The Reading Agency, Chatterbooks, and Michael Foreman is worthwhile in so many ways. It is all about visual literacy, but above all it gives adults real pause for thought by looking at humanitarian aid through a child’s eyes.”