'I'm Jasmine Wakefield-Burkitt, but everyone calls me Jazz. In a lot of ways I'm a completely typical teenager: my room's always messy, and I sleep in in the mornings, I have a laugh with my friends and Mum says I'm on the computer far too much (parents, eh? What do they know?). But in other ways, my life is anything but typical. Mum and I have a rare, undiagnosed form of dwarfism. Mum says that looking the way we do is like being famous, but without the money. I think it's like walking out in a ridiculous costume, but it's not something we can take off at the end of the day, it's just the way we look. People like to point out difference. Difference is brilliant, difference is what makes this world. But there's no reason to be nasty and hurtful ...' Jazz is an extraordinary young woman who hundreds of thousands first came to love in her documentary series Small Teen, Big World. Jazz has to face a world that is not designed for people of her size u to make a sandwich or just a cup of tea she has to 'climb round the house like a monkey'. But she also has to face prejudice every day u her promising athletic career ruined by schoolyard bullying. On top of this, she became a registered carer for her mother at just 13. Throughout it all, Jazz has retained her calm good-nature, her wicked sense of humour and her determination to live life to the full. Her memoir Growing Pains, which she has written herself, is an honest, very funny and incredibly inspiring read.
