The Lonely Book

Ages 10 And Up

A warm and loving story about how a non-binary person comes to understand and accept themselves by an award-winning queer author.Every morning, when Annie’s moms open up their bookshop, there’s a pile of books on the counter, waiting for the right reader to come and find them.But one day, there’s a book nobody comes for. Nobody ever comes, and each day the book gets lonelier, and the bookshop becomes an unhappy place. Who can the book be for, and why don’t they come?Eventually, the book finds the reader who needs it: Annie’s sister, Charlotte. Charlotte asks the family to call her Charlie now, and to use ‘they/them’ pronouns.The bookshop cheers up. Customers start buying books again.

About the Author

Meg Grehan is originally from County Louth but now hiding away in County Donegal in the north-west of Ireland, with a very ginger girlfriend, an even more ginger dog and an undisclosed number of cats (none of whom is ginger). Her first book The Space Between won the Eilís Dillon Award at the 2018 Children's Books Ireland Awards. The Deepest Breath won the Judge's Special Prize at the 2020 Children's Books Ireland Awards and was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize in the UK, and was selected for the Read for Empathy reading list 2020, as well as being named a Bank Street Best Children's Book of 2022 with Outstanding Merit and a Booklist Editors' Choice: Books for Youth, 2021. The Deepest Breath is published in the USA by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and in France by Talents Haut. Baby Teeth was a Kirkus Best YA Book of 2022 and was nominated for the 2023 Carnegie Medal.