Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the outgoing children's laureate, uses his new book "A British Childhood" to make a heartfelt appeal for an end to "indifference," arguing that "it doesn't take much to make a good childhood. It just takes attention." Based on two years of frontline work in schools, libraries, and prisons, his dispatches resist the usual doom-laden narratives about screen addiction and broken Britain. Instead, he highlights the enduring power of good stories to anchor and inspire children, even amid austerity and pandemic aftershocks.