A grandmother has created a series of books to help her non-verbal granddaughter living with autism to express her feelings.

Joann Jones, from Bristol, said she decided to publish her stories across the UK after seeing how transformative they were for five year old Zaeah.

The 55-year-old – who works as a learning assistant for students with special educational needs and disabilities – said Zaeah’s ability to communicate was growing every day.

The 10 books associate each emotion with a colour. This allows a child to point at a relevant colour to let their family know how they are feeling.

Initially, Ms Jones and Zaeah’s mother had used nursery rhymes and television programmes to encourage her to speak.

But expressing her emotions was still very challenging and frustrating for her, which was upsetting for the family.

Zaeah’s mother said: “Not being able to speak and communicate led to expressing it in a physical way.

“Face scratching, hair pulling, meltdowns on the floor and it’s because she wanted to be heard and she didn’t know what to say.”

Ms Jones started researching Zaeah’s experiences to try and understand how she could help her.

But after visiting several bookshops, she said she could not find any texts about the emotions of young children who are neurodivergent.

“It was really difficult because at the age of two they don’t even understand their emotions,” she said.

“I was sat at home the next day and it came to me. Colour, everyone understands colour,” she added.

Speech and language therapist Rysha Flint thought the idea was “fantastic” and encouraged Ms Jones to publish.

“Lots of children with autism struggle with abstract concepts like emotions, so we often in my work associate emotions to colours,” she added.

Zaeah’s mother said the books had really helped her daughter.

“The books made a difference because it comes at all angles – she can see it [the emotions] and hear it when I’m reading to her and she has colours, everything is attached to a colour.”

“We are able to push those boundaries by giving her all those pieces of information hoping something will stick, and it does. Even if it’s one word at a time,” she added.