Celia Bryce

Celia Bryce worked in Britain as a writer whose debut novel uses friendship and humor to portray teenagers living through serious medical treatment. Anthem for Jackson Dawes brings thirteen-year-old Megan Bright and Jackson Dawes together on a children's hospital ward. Megan initially wants ordinary school life to continue unchanged, while Jackson's familiarity with the ward and instinct for companionship gradually alter her experience of it. Their conversations, his storytelling, and their relationships with younger patients give the book warmth without making the setting incidental. Bloomsbury Children's Books released it in Britain in 2012, followed by its American publication in 2013. Bryce keeps Megan's changing ties with friends and family alongside her connection with Jackson, showing how treatment can create distance from routines that once seemed secure. Anthem for Jackson Dawes is both a first-love story and a study of borrowed courage, focused on what one young person can offer another when neither can control the larger circumstances. The ward remains a social world of its own, not merely a backdrop.