If you have ever tried to buy a book as a gift for someone with dementia you may have struggled to find anything suitable; while there is no shortage of self-help titles about dementia, there are surprisingly few books for people living with dementia to read for enjoyment. This is not simply a gap in the market – it’s a real concern because it means that many people living with dementia give up on reading much earlier than they otherwise might. With dementia, it becomes harder to follow a narrative that twists and turns or to keep track of a cast of characters. Large chunks of text are difficult to digest, especially if the lines are long or the language is complex, and smaller fonts can be hard to read.

With some types of dementia, pictures may be difficult to interpret. Subject matter can be a challenge too, since people with dementia may find sad stories disproportionately distressing. It’s not surprising that many give up on reading altogether, adding to the long list of life’s pleasures that fall out of reach as dementia progresses. But what if books could be written and designed to address some of these difficulties? This is the challenge that Equal Arts set out to address when we established our new dementia-friendly publishing imprint, Open Ended Books, in 2024.

Who is Equal Arts and what are they doing for people living with dementia?

Equal Arts is a Newcastle-based creative ageing charity with 35 years' experience of creative programming for older people and people living with dementia. We work across artforms, focussing on enabling people to live ‘in the moment’, exploring their imagination and developing their creativity. Writing and publishing for people with dementia is a new venture for us; our first book, Bewick Tales – Stories from the Life and Work of Thomas Bewick, was published in March 2024. Our second title, Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Days comes out this month.

Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Days tells the story of the life and writings of Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855), sister of the poet William Wordsworth. The book was developed in close association with the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere and most of the pictures are of items in the museum’s collection. Creating the book was an opportunity to shine a light on Dorothy's remarkable achievements – so often overshadowed by those of her brother. The fact that Dorothy herself seems to have developed a form of dementia in later life made it all the more important to share her story, though the book focuses mainly on the years when she and William lived at Dove Cottage, when she kept her famous Grasmere Journal.

The book has a simple over-arching narrative – the story of Dorothy's life – but each double page spread is designed to provide a satisfying reading experience on its own. This means it doesn’t matter if a reader forgets what went before or puts the book down and opens it again at another page. Each page has a mixture of words and images, with the text arranged in short, manageable sections. I wanted Dorothy's voice to be heard throughout the book, so I included short quotations from her letters and journals on most pages. Her observations of nature, people and the weather make for perfect ‘in the moment’ reading material.

Once the text was drafted, I worked closely with our designer Wendy Lewis to shape the book. All our page layout and design decisions, including the larger than usual font size and generous line spacing are the result of consultation with readers. We also consulted on the size and format of the book: a landscape shape was found to be the best to support both individual and shared reading. Readers of  Bewick Tales said they particularly valued the open-ended questions which act as conversation starters or prompts for the imagination. So, for Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Days I added more of these, though hopefully not so many as to become formulaic; importantly, there are no correct answers – it's all about sparking the imagination.

We thought long and hard about what to include in the book’s blurb; if we mention the word ‘dementia’ will some readers be deterred? There is still a reluctance to talk about dementia, which leads to embarrassment and late diagnosis. However, if we don’t brand our books as ‘dementia-friendly’ how will people looking to buy a book for a friend or relative with dementia find them? We arrived at a compromise: on the front cover is a removeable ‘dementia friendly’ sticker; on the back we included this quotation from one of our readers, Anita Goundry, who lives with young onset dementia and Alzheimer’s disease: ‘I love everything about this book. It’s clear and easy to read, with a good balance of text and pictures and I learned so much. The questions give you something different to talk about together, and I like the way that the book encourages you to get out and visit new places. I struggle to remember what I’ve read when I turn the page but this book isa pleasure to read again and again.'

@equal_arts | #dementiafriendly | #DorothyWordsworth |  @WordsworthTrust

For further reading, browse our other dementia-related features and genres:

Reading Well for Dementia by The Reading Agency - Books for people living with dementia, including people affected by dementia 

We help raise awareness of dementia this World Alzheimer's Month with these 15 books featuring dementia

Alzheimer’s and dementia

Coping with / advice about Alzheimer’s and dementia