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How do you give hope to children when you're not feeling hopeful? What's the difference between optimism and hope? How do children's writers balance light and dark, joy and sadness? And what kind of language sustains and nurtures us through difficult times when we're young? Smriti Halls, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Kate Fox and Gaia Vince join Ian McMillan for a 'hope-ist' Verb.

Smriti Halls\nSmriti\u2019s books often seek to acknowledge loss and sadness whilst suggesting through image, rhythm and story that we are never truly alone. Smriti reads from \u2018Rain Before Rainbows\u2019 and explains how carefully she thought about the balance of dark and light in this book for young children, and about the nature of time. Smriti shares the language that sustained her as a child \u2013 Louise May Alcott\u2019s \u2018Little Women\u2019 and Oscar Wilde's \u2018The Happy Prince\u2019. Books by Smriti are read all over the world: \u2018I\u2019m Sticking with You\u2019 was a number one bestseller in the U.S.A and recent stories include \u2018The Little Island\u2019 and \u2018Elephant in my Kitchen\u2019.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce\nScreenwriter and author of children\u2019s books Frank Cottrell-Boyce, reads us his story about a world surrounded by cloud and a girl called Sunny who realises there's life beyond it. \u2018Murcaster\u2019 is a story written as a \u2018hope\u2019 to give to children during this pandemic (it\u2019s one of over 100 such \u2018hopes\u2019 included in an anthology by Katherine Rundell ). Frank explains how the writing process itself is inevitably an act of hope, and discusses the influence of hymns \u2013 the way even their rhythms can communicate a kind of hopefulness. Frank also considers the way \u2018hope\u2019 is integral to the DNA of the \u2018Doctor Who\u2019 (he has written for the series) . His most recent book for children is \u2018The Runaway Robot\u2019.

Gaia Vince\nGaia is an award-winning science journalist, author, and broadcaster. She\u2019s interested in how human systems and Earth\u2019s planetary systems interact. Her book \u2018Adventures in the Anthropocene\u201d won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. She discusses her writing on co-operation and on the idea that we are now part of a collective she's named \u2018Homni\u2019 (explored in her new book 'Transcendence') . Gaia reads a special commission for The Verb \u2013 a letter to her children for them to open when they're in their eighties.

Kate Fox\nFresh from captaining Loughborough University on University Challenge, stand-up poet and Verb regular Kate Fox shares the most interesting comments on hope she has come across this year, and quotations from her own childhood reading. These include the extended railway metaphor employed by Government scientist Jonathan Van-Tam, ideas about hopeful journeys from 'Jane Eyre' and 'Alice in Wonderland' and the enduring resonance of 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich\u2019s phrase \u2018All shall be well\u2019.