Many London children are aware that there are civil wars around the globe even though they may never watch the television news or pick up a newspaper. The “evidence” is often sitting alongside them in the classroom for it is estimated that there are currently 23,500 refugee children in Britain’s schools, 85 per cent of whom are in inner London boroughs.

The publication of the Don’t Forget Us series is therefore timely because these books give older primary pupils a valuable insight into the ways of life that displaced children have been forced to abandon. Each book has a young narrator who has fled from wars in Somalia and Bosnia or persecution in Romania or China. There are sections on the history, culture, customs and food of each country or would-be nation (Palestine and Kurdistan) and there is a judicious mix of serious information and funny facts. Many of the photographs are memorable, particularly the cheery pictures of Romanian peasant women proudly brandishing shiny new saucepans and plump pickled gherkins. The pen-and-ink drawings by David Burroughs are excellent too. But, sadly, many teachers - particularly those working more than 15 miles from Charing Cross - will reason that there is no logical slot for work on refugees in the still-crowded key stage 2 curriculum.

That may change from September when the slimmer curriculum Orders take effect, but in the meantime Indian Migrations and African Migrations may also come up against the same problem. These titles are aimed at KS3 as well as KS2 pupils but the African book adopts a similar format to the Don’t Forget Us titles in that it tells its story through the eyes of several migrant children. The technique is less successful here because there are no pictures of some of the narrators and a few of the personal histories are left half-finished. But Dr Hakim Adi provides a decent account of the slave trade, which transported an estimated 15 million Africans to the plantations, and black people’s subsequent struggles for equality.

Indian Migrations is, however, the more coherent of the two books. Hindus once believed that crossing the “black water” (the sea) made people impure,but irresistible push-and-pull factors have persuaded millions of Indians to take that risk. In the 19th century thousands of them unwittingly took over the jobs that the newly emancipated slaves had just relinquished, and in the first half of this century many became lascars (merchant shipping lines’ practice of cutting costs by replacing white crews with Third World sailors is not a new one). This book tells their sad, but almost heroic, stories and charts the later mass exoduses of would-be factory workers, merchants and professionals from not only India but Idi Amin’s Uganda.

But the most interesting of all the migrants who rate a mention in this book is definitely Sake Deen Mahomed, who ran the popular vapour baths on Brighton seafront in the Regency period. He was an expert in shampooing, which in those days meant massaging the arms and legs after a steaming bath, and was eventually appointed “Shampooing surgeon to His Majesty George IV”. There are some job titles that are worth travelling thousands of miles for.