Benjamin Hall's good news story

When journalist Benjamin Hall put on a new hat as a children’s author, a family mascot became central – so too themes about personal responsibility and honesty

Benjamin Hall is frank about the challenges of writing his first ever children’s book, Read All About it!. Yes, he may have been a journalist for many years, reporting from some of the most dangerous places on the planet. And when, in 2022, he suffered devastating injuries in an explosion outside Kviv, he not only survived to tell the tale but did so in two New York Times bestsellers – Saved and Resolute.

None of this quite prepared him for distilling big ideas into such a very few words in a story that young children can relate to. “Can I just say it’s very, very, very difficult,” he says. “I’m a journalist and if you give me facts and I speak to a few people I can put it together. Even the books I wrote before, the non-fiction, the same idea. But when you have such a short few pages to create a story that hopefully flows and has morals and a character – it was difficult.”

Not that he didn’t enjoy it. It was a close-to-home idea that came about when he was talking to his publisher HarperCollins about a hedgehog gifted by his children, his companion on every foreign assignment. “Wherever I was reporting round the world, wherever I was covering wars, I had this little hedgehog,” he says. “I had it in my pocket and I always used to travel with it.”

Benjamin Hall's good news story — The book was inspired by the tiny hedgehog, given to him by his daughters, that he carried with him through war zones

A reminder of home and his daughters, certainly, but it became more than that. “Then when I was in these really bad places, I wanted to tell my children what was going on but they were really young at the time. I thought the hedgehog would send home these really small snippets of where I was, what I was doing and what the hedgehog was doing with me.” It was a way of making things relatable for his three young daughters (he now has four daughters) but grew into a means of communicating in a reassuring way across miles and time zones.

That little hedgehog was with Benjamin Hall in Kviv, tucked into his body armour, when the explosion happened. “Even when I was trying to be evacuated to hospital, I had this hedgehog in my hand, and it just reminded me of so many amazing things. It gave me the strength to think about my children – it reminded me of home.”

Evacuated to a military-base hospital in America, he had a gruelling recovery journey ahead. Communicating with his family back home in London was essential, but he and his wife Alicia didn’t want his facial injuries to upset the children. “It was the hedgehog who started to send these stories and videos home at first. I didn’t want them to see my face. The main thing for us is that we didn’t want them to be overly traumatised – we didn’t want them to see something that might really haunt them.”

It’s not hard to see why HarperCollins felt the family mascot made a good hero. And there was no doubting what the story would centre on because Benjamin Hall is a journalist to his bones. Hedgehog not only has a father who is a newspaper editor, but in his own quest to save the animals in the forest from the bear he makes sure he gets the news out there. “One of the reasons that I wanted somewhere in the story to talk about his Dad being a journalist, and how the news, the truth, can save the animals and the forest is because I think journalism is more central now than it has ever been,” he says.

With the ongoing march of AI, social media and all the rest, he knows news gathering’s primary purpose needs to be made clearer – separate – from the rest. “That very basic idea of journalism, which is of someone going out there to see what is happening with their own eyes, that is what journalism must be about. Our kids must be encouraged to do that.”

As a reporter, Benjamin Hall is clear on his role, and as a parent and seasoned bedtime-story reader to small children, he’s keen on books with a point – a positive life lesson. “I want parents to be able to say: ‘what did you learn, why did the hedgehog do that, why do you want to stand up if people are doing bad things to you?'”

Hedgehog does the right thing, but in doing so he believes he has broken his father’s golden rules – crossing the river, talking to strangers and losing his bag. Benjamin Hall felt this transgression for the right reasons was an important plotline. “You have to stand up if something is not right. It can be as simple as helping someone across the road – we have to remind kids of that.” All’s well in the end and Hedgehog becomes hero of the hour, and front-page news. It’s a fitting starring role for a furry mascot who supported the Hall household in so many ways.

“Wherever I was reporting round the world, wherever I was covering wars, I had this little hedgehog”

Benjamin Hall is full of admiration for his family’s courage over the months he was in hospital. “I’ve got the most incredible wife. Through the most difficult moments, our priority was the children – that their lives weren’t disrupted, that they stayed going to school. They kept their life going.

“Kids in themselves are incredibly resilient. They can pick themselves up. They can get through some of the most difficult moments,” he says. “One example of that was that my wife and I weren’t sure when we were going to tell them I had prosthetic legs. And some people had said that’s a real hit for some children.” In the end, his wife told them the news – simply saying that Daddy now had robot legs. “And they were like, ‘Oh, OK’ – all that worry that we had!”

The Hall family story of working through the most difficult of times chimes with another key message of Read All About It! – the strength of working as a team. “We get through things because we work together with other people – and you can’t do it by yourself,” says Benjamin Hall.