Tomos Roberts (‘Tomfoolery’) wrote the poem The Great Realisation and launched it on his YouTube channel in March 2020. It’s a poem of simple hope, and a plea for all of us to use the lessons and perspective of ‘2020 hindsight’ to create a better, more loving world once the global pandemic has receded.

Here’s Tomos and his brother and sister with the poem on his ‘Tomfoolery’ YouTube channel.

He has now brought his beautiful and encouraging words to book form with the addition of watercolour illustrations by Japanese artist Nomoco.

Roberts wrote The Great Realisation for his young siblings while in Covid19 lockdown. But I think the poem is for all of us. Its simplicity allows us to put aside our doubts, fears and cynicism and, perhaps just for a moment, imagine future possibilities for the whole world.

The book would be a perfect addition to school libraries and classrooms.

Other videos on the Tomfoolery YouTube channelhttps://www.probablytomfoolery.com/ are worth a visit, for a dose of what I think of as ‘sensible optimism’. I highly recommend A Tale of Two Mindsets for a few minutes of poetry that will help to deter the cynicism and doubts!

My thanks to HarperCollins Children’s Books for a copy of this wonderful book to review.