The Lost Child of Chernobyl

My new book for children is based in Chernobyl after the 1986 disaster and will be published in April 2021, on the 35th anniversary of an event that shocked the world and had widespread consequences for people far from Chernobyl itself..

At the time, my sister was living in Austria in an area that was badly affected by radioactive fallout. For many weeks her young children like thousands of others, were not allowed outside to play. Sand was removed from all the children’s sandpits in the public parks. In North Wales, close to where we lived, sheep farmers were prevented from moving or selling their lamb for many, many years.

Twenty years later my daughter travelled to Belarus to make a documentary film supporting the work of a Chernobyl Children’s Charity. In hospitals she met families with children who continue to suffer the long term consequences of the radioactive fallout. She travelled from Minsk, through traditional rural villages, towards areas where a dosimeter is still an essential accessory.

When I watched ‘The Baboushka’s of Chernobyl’, the 2015 documentary film by Holly Morris and Anne Bogart, about women who refused to leave the exclusion zone, the seed for ‘The Lost Child of Chernobyl’ was firmly planted in my mind. Six years later, it has come to fruition.