Meet the Characters

Welcome,

If you have stumbled across this page you may well have seen my first book in the Fenn's Friends series, Me and My Friends Out and About. This is a colouring book for you to enjoy, filled with children like me. You may have spotted some of us may look a bit different or have a family different to yours so let me tell you more!

You can read a little snippet about us below or please feel free to download the PDF version. Grown ups are very welcome to use any of our PDFs free of charge, to share with your children or class.

I guess I should start with me! I am Fenn. I live in the forest with my Mum, Dad and 3 brothers. I like my littlest brother the best, he is the one with long hair in our picture in the colouring book. He is so funny but quite mischievous too!

You may have spotted I am wearing a hat. I have a condition called Epilepsy and this hat is actually a helmet. It protects my head when I have a seizure. There are different types of seizures, I have ones where I fall to the ground, my arms and legs go very stiff and them my body shakes. The helmet stops me from hitting my head on things like tables, toys and the ground! Afterwards I feel very tired so I take it off whilst I have a sleep.

You can find out a little bit more about my life with epilepsy in my new picture book which will be launched early next year. If you are a grown up looking for child friendly resources around epilepsy Epilepsy Action has lots of free information and activities.

Hello, I am Harry. I live in the city with my Mum and baby sister Sophie. I love animals and go to the city farm as much as possible which is a short walk from my house. Chickens are my favourite animal, I love watching them scratching the ground looking for treats! I also love the colour blue, can you tell! Today I was wearing a blue t.shirt, blue trousers and blue trainers. I also wore something else blue, can you spot it?

It is my hearing aid. I am deaf in my left ear, this means I can't hear on that side what is being said to me or the noises around me. The hearing aid helps me to hear all the sounds more clearly, I love to hear the cockerel at the farm "cock-a-doodle-do!" But I don't like listening to Sophie crying! Did you know that hearing aids in the right ear are a different colour, they are usually red.

A story all about my trip to the farm will be available soon, it will also be available in sign language too. If you want to find out more about childhood deafness here are some useful sites.

National Deaf Children's Society

CSSEF - Supporting deaf awareness in schools

Hello, I am Abbie. I live with my Mum and Stepdad in the countryside. My favourite things in the whole wide world are horses and ponies! I love them so much that I go riding every week and on the weekends I help at the stables filling up the hay nets, mucking out and brushing the ponies. The pony I love the most is called Shadow, I take her a carrot every week and give her extra strokes. She loves being brushed too.

A lot of my friends were surprised that I go riding because I have a disability. Did you spot that I am missing my lower arm and left hand, or did you think the illustrator forgot to draw it on!! I was born with no lower limb and it does make somethings tricky but I am not going to let it stop me from doing all the things that I love. One day, when I am grown up, I want to compete at the Paralympics, what sport do you think I would choose? Of course it would be horse riding!

There is an amazing charity that supports riding with disabilities called Riding for the Disabled it has lots of information so do have a look.

Hello everyone, I am Sally. I live by the seaside with my Mum, Dad and brother James. We spend lots of time at the beach. Sometimes we go in the sea for a swim but my favourite thing is building really big sandcastles and decorating them with pretty shells.

When I am at the beach I have to keep something very safe in my bag. What do you think is in there? A toy, a phone, money for an ice cream? No, it is actually a special medical pouch that protects part of my body. Now this might sound a bit yucky, but I promise you it's not.. I can't poo like most people, the poo can't come out of my bottom. I had to have a operation to have an opening on the side of me called a stoma. This now allows the poo to come out safely, it goes into the pouch and then gets thrown away.

Because the pouch is waterproof I can still swim as it keeps my stoma nice and dry.

Here is the Colostomy website if you want to find out more about Stomas.

Hi, I am Leon. I live in a big city with my foster family. I have a foster sister called Ayesha. The city is really busy, there are lots of sounds and lights all day and night. My favourite place is at school as that is where I get to see my friends and its a bit quieter.

On bonfire night I went to the fireworks display with my friends Jasmine, Andrew and Kashvi, we had to drive there, then walk up a big hill. The fireworks were amazing to watch, I loved seeing the colours just explode, up in the night sky. What I didn't enjoy though was the noise. Some times its loud in our flat with all the noises outside but the fireworks were really, really loud. I don't like loud noises at all they sometimes make me scared. Luckily I took my headphones and that made them much better.

I sometimes think its just me that doesn't like the loud bangs of fireworks but did you spot who else doesn't like it- animals! Animals get scared too when fireworks go 'bang!' in the sky I wonder if owls would like headphones too?!

Leon has ASD and noise is one of the things he finds difficult.

This is a great video for older children and adults about why noise can be an issue

Hello, I'm Amelia. I live in a little village with my Mum, Dad and brother Jacob. Right by our house is a nature area, there are lots of trees and a huge pond full of ducks! On the other side of the pond is an amazing playground. On Saturdays Jacob, Dad and I ride our bikes along the path past the pond to the park. We often stop to spot the ducks and other wildlife like butterflies and squirrels.

I never really liked our Saturday bike ride because I kept falling off, this made me really sad. Then for my birthday I got this new red, shiny bike. It had a big purple bow on the front and it had 3 wheels.. it was a trike!

I have Motor Dyspraxia, this means I find it hard to co-ordinate my arms and legs and this means I can't always balance. Three wheels makes it much easier for me to ride as the trike doesn't wobble like a bike. Now I don't fall off and I can go really fast! Saturdays are now my favourite day.

Hi, I am Ben. I live with my sister Ellie and our Dad. Going to the funfair was so much fun, Ellie and I had such a great day. I got a frog balloon and my favourite, an ice cream cone with chocolate sauce. Ellie won a giant teddy, we are going to call it Big Bear. There were lots of rides at the fair, the spinning cups were my favourite as they went very fast.

I like fast things, sometimes my friend Max and I have wheelchair races, our dads push us really fast around the park. Did you spot me at the park in your book? I was on the slide with Ellie. I find it hard to walk and climb because the muscles in my legs aren't very strong but dad lifts me to the top and I can slide all the way down. Whee!

Are you enjoying learning about my friends? Can you remember all their names?! I have a few more for you to meet, Chloe and Charlotte, Ravenna, and Isabelle. They are going to tell you a little bit about themselves and their families.

Hello from us both! Do we look very similar? That's because we are twins! Our family is quite big. We live on a farm with our Mum and Dad, big brother Calum, big sister Clarissa, little brother Casper and our baby brother Charlie. That's 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 of us all in one big farmhouse! It can be quite noisy when we are all at home together but there are lots of places to play on the farm and lots of jobs to do so we spend a lot of time outside. We like to help dad milk the goats. Mummy is then very clever and makes the milk into goats cheese to sell at the farmers market. The best thing about having lots of brothers and sisters is there is always someone to play with and on Sundays we all walk to the woodland and play. Dad likes to help us build dens too.

Hello, I am Ravenna. I live in a house in a pretty rural village with my Mum and Dad, my Sister, 2 Brothers and our Grandma. I love having my Grandma living with us she tells the best stories at bedtime. Our house is quite big but we don't really have a garden so sometimes we go to the park and have a picnic. Did you see the big basket of food we took with us? That day we had my favourite, vegetable samosas. My mum and grandma made them and I helped. When I grow up I want to be able to make delicious picnics like this too, maybe I could be a chef?

Hello, I am Isobelle. I live in a house in a village. I have two Mums, a sister called Jess and a cat named Willow.

We are home educated and we like to learn out and about which means lots of trips to amazing places. Jess and I love animals but penguins are my absolute favourite. When we visit the zoo I spend all day watching them and asking the keeper lots of questions. Did you know there are 18 species of penguins!  The penguins are always having so much fun swimming and waddling around, one day I hope to see them in the wild. Maybe I could be a wildlife photographer?