The charity Homeless International and Bradford LEA jointly produced this enterprising resource pack aimed at key stage 2 and specifically at the literacy hour. Bite-size episodes and anecdotes, all illustrating various forms of community self-help, are drawn from India, Pakistan, Bradford, Northern Ireland and South Africa.

Though the scale is right, the language is sometimes austere for the level, and the wide geographical range involves assumptions about background knowledge (such as on the origins, and consequent intractability, of the Ulster conflict), and “research” skills that could be somewhat unrealistic.

In practice, one could envisage this material being useful at key stage 3, in personal and social education as well as geographical contexts. However, this is a commendable reminder that a preoccupation with literacy need not imply the exclusion of the wider world.