The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2022–2023
Get Better Books turns scary treatment into playful books children can laugh through
Two creators and Great Ormond Street Hospital turn complex treatment journeys into witty interactive books that let sick children laugh while they learn.
Get Better Books · Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children
What it had to solve
Paediatric anxiety around complex treatment damages children's short- and long-term psychological wellbeing and costs hospitals money. Seriously ill children with cancer needed to understand their treatment journey in a way they could actually take in.
How it works
Could a printed interactive book help seriously ill children with cancer understand their complex treatment journey, alleviate anxiety around procedures, and ultimately get better? That premise sits at the heart of Get Better Books, a project by Kingston School of Art academic Jake Abrams and graduate Georgina Potier, who had undergone a kidney transplant as a child and knew how frightening the process felt.
Designed in close collaboration with clinicians, patients, psychologists and learning-disability specialists, the books translate clinical complexity into witty interactive play. Friendly characters walk a child through what will happen, and the printed format lets them hold the story of their own treatment and work through it at their own pace.
Paediatric anxiety is not just distressing — it has serious effects on short- and long-term psychological wellbeing and carries financial ramifications for hospitals. By making the treatment journey legible and even funny, the books gave children a way to engage with what was coming instead of dreading it, and the approach spread far beyond the first ward.
Why it lands
- A child cannot process a clinical leaflet, but can engage with a playful book — the format meets the audience where their fear actually lives.
- Laughter defuses dread: making the treatment journey witty gives children a reason to open the book again instead of avoiding the subject.
- Co-designing with clinicians, patients, psychologists and LD specialists kept the content medically accurate while keeping it child-shaped.
- A printed object needs no screen, password or app, so a hospital can simply hand the intervention over at the bedside.
- The same method could travel: once one book worked, other departments and hospitals could adapt the format to their own conditions.
What it did
The books let children both laugh and learn instead of fear what comes next. The series has helped more than 3,500 children, earned a D&AD Pencil in 2023, and spread from Great Ormond Street to hospitals across the UK.
What you can take
When your audience is most afraid, the job is not to inform but to let them play with the information — a format a child can laugh at makes a frightening procedure feel manageable.
Since then
The series has helped more than 3,500 children and earned a D&AD Pencil in 2023 alongside other industry recognition. With support from Kidney Research UK, distribution expanded from Great Ormond Street Hospital to hospitals across the UK, and the creators were later commissioned for German editions and a version for healthcare providers in the United Arab Emirates. D&AD's archive keeps the work as a Side Hustle Pencil winner — an independent creative project that grew into a national health intervention.
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