The Map of Me

A gentle story about moving, making connections and mapping a better world.

When a young girl moves to a new country, her mum helps her draw a map to understand her unfamiliar surroundings. They draw the new neighbourhood, new friends and the special places the girl has found but important things from the past are missing like Grandma and Joe-Dog. So the girl makes the map bigger to include them.

Soon the girl’s friends are inspired to add their own stories and the distances between them all seem to shrink. Yet when misfortune strikes and the girl’s world is shown to be less fixed than she thought, how will she learn to navigate change?

Discover how we all have the power to create a better future.

This hope-filled book is an absolute gift for anxious seven to nine-year-olds. Strikingly illustrated by Olga Shtonda, it gives us a little girl agonising over change, loss, and fear of the unknown. She finds comfort in maps drawn by her parents, which show that even in the dark days a better future is possible.
Sunday Post

Some stories are so beautifully told that they speak directly to you – and The Map of Me is one of them. . .Using maps to create a picture of the past and, in this case, helping the little girl to cope with feelings of grief and loss is so sensitively and thoughtfully presented. It also enables children to develop their sense of the lives of others, expanding their view beyond the ‘lens of self’ stage and developing empathy and understanding.
ReadingZone – Sue Wilsher