What you need to be warm by Neil Gaiman

If you only consider buying one book mentioned on this blog this year please make it this one!

Neil Gaiman asked the question on the cover of this book out on social media. He received tens of thousands of replies and he made them into the poem found in this book. The poem was then made into a film. Then he gave the poem to the UNHCR and they gave sections of the poem twelve illustrators and the designers at Bloomsbury pulled all this together into a truly special book.

The book features illustrations from Chris Riddell, Benji Davies, Yuliya Gwilym, Nadine Kaadan, Daniel Egnéus, Pam Smy, Petr Horácek, Beth Suzanna, Bagram Ibatoulline, Marie-Alice Harel, Majid Adin and Richard Jones, with a thought-provoking cover from Oliver Jeffers.

I would share this book with students in the school library in Grades 5-7 - first read the poem and talk about how it came about, then show the video by Neil Gaiman, followed by the book and then go further and explore the important work of the UNCHR. Students could also design their own illustrations/responses to different sets of lines from this poem or write their own answer to the title question. You might have some books in your school library with illustrations by some of the contributors to this book such as Oliver Jeffers, Benji Davies, Chris Riddell or Richard Jones. 

What you need to be warm

A baked potato of a winter’s night to wrap your hands around or burn your mouth.
A blanket knitted by your mother’s cunning fingers. Or your grandmother’s.
A smile, a touch, trust, as you walk in from the snow
or return to it, the tips of your ears pricked pink and frozen.

The tink tink tink of iron radiators waking in an old house.
To surface from dreams in a bed, burrowed beneath blankets and comforters,
the change of state from cold to warm is all that matters, and you think
just one more minute snuggled here before you face the chill. Just one.

Places we slept as children: they warm us in the memory.
We travel to an inside from the outside. To the orange flames of the fireplace
or the wood burning in the stove. Breath-ice on the inside of windows,
to be scratched off with a fingernail, melted with a whole hand.

Frost on the ground that stays in the shadows, waiting for us.
Wear a scarf. Wear a coat. Wear a sweater. Wear socks. Wear thick gloves.
An infant as she sleeps between us. A tumble of dogs,
a kindle of cats and kittens. Come inside. You’re safe now.

A kettle boiling at the stove. Your family or friends are there. They smile.
Cocoa or chocolate, tea or coffee, soup or toddy, what you know you need.
A heat exchange, they give it to you, you take the mug
and start to thaw. While outside, for some of us, the journey began

as we walked away from our grandparents’ houses
away from the places we knew as children: changes of state and state and state,
to stumble across a stony desert, or to brave the deep waters,
while food and friends, home, a bed, even a blanket become just memories.

Sometimes it only takes a stranger, in a dark place,
to hold out a badly-knitted scarf, to offer a kind word, to say
we have the right to be here, to make us warm in the coldest season.

You have the right to be here.

Companion books:

Sea Prayer (there are two different cover designs for this book)

Vanishing Colors

Wishes

Refugees (this is also based on a poem suitable for older readers 12+)