What Are You Looking For?

A brief, illustrated introduction to Lincoln’s life, told through selected scenes and free verse rather than a comprehensive biography.

A reflective story about leaving a familiar home, remembering what matters and finding a way to carry those memories into a new place.

A visually lively introduction to evolution, this book connects cells, changing environments, extinction events and human origins across immense stretches of time. Its clear sequence and labels may help readers build a first framework for how life changes.

This is a light, episodic school fantasy in which magical animals appear from Ms Plum’s cupboard and become catalysts for pupils’ changing behaviour, confidence, friendships and worries.

A useful introduction to video games as an industry rather than simply a pastime, showing the many specialised workers, skills and educational routes involved in making them.

A lively introduction to a deaf baseball player whose practical solution to communication barriers became part of the sport. It combines biography, baseball history and bright illustrations celebrating persistence and ingenuity.

This is an action-led animal fantasy about packs facing a looming threat. Lucky’s troubling visions, a traitor, divided loyalties and unexpected allies create a tense story about survival and trust.

This is a comic school story about an overconfident aspiring writer whose contest ambitions meet opposition, embarrassment and competing relationships. Its diary-and-message structure creates a brisk, multi-perspective-feeling reading experience.

Expect an urgent survival adventure in which two children must respond to rising danger after extreme weather separates them from their group. Its environmental focus sits alongside friendship, courage and the pressures of fitting in.

Choose this for a fast-moving scientific overview that links geology, climate, anatomy and evolution across immense stretches of time. It favours memorable ideas and lesser-known organisms over comprehensive coverage or visual explanation.

Choose this for a child fascinated by vehicles, farming or how machines work. It combines accessible explanations with colourful illustrations, comic characters and small visual details that invite looking closely.

A visually rich introduction to freshwater, moving from scientific foundations to living habitats and worldwide challenges. Its final practical section invites readers to connect large environmental questions with choices at home and in their communities.

A lively introduction to women’s contributions across history and different fields, presented through colourful illustrations, short profiles, facts and quotations. Its page-by-page structure supports dipping in, revisiting individual figures and noticing links between personal achievement and wider social change.

This is a visually led Earth-history journey, using one pebble to connect geological change with the appearance of living things and human activity. Its chronological sweep may invite shared looking, pausing and questions rather than one quick read.

This is a character-led wartime coming-of-age story: relationships and growing up receive sustained attention before and during the conflict. Its view extends beyond the front to family life, nursing and shortages in England.

This is an inviting, fact-rich beach exploration book: a repeated search pattern encourages participation, while illustrations and tucked-away information reward close observation. The final foldout shifts discovery towards imagination.

This is a tender, nature-centred story about a boy’s bond with a seal and his grandfather. Its strongest offering is emotional range: delight in the sea sits alongside physical danger, disappearance, the grandfather’s absence and the passage of generations.

A lively school-and-family story about handling change, friendship and unfair treatment through humour and imagination. Omar’s Muslim identity is part of everyday life, not a separate lesson.

This is an energetic introduction to rewilding that combines serious environmental information with cartoons, unusual natural examples and clearly explained scientific ideas. Its central message is hopeful: restoring nature could help both ecosystems and people.

A warm wilderness adventure combines a new family arrangement, practical outdoor activity and animal characters with comic community problems. It offers a gentle route into discussing belonging, cooperation and care for the natural world.

A broad, illustrated introduction to Asia, organised by region and topic. Children can dip into maps, history, culture, wildlife, landmarks and notable people, then follow connections to migration, global culture, technology and the future.

A dramatic underwater sequence introduces earthquakes, scattering sea creatures, lava and the birth of a volcanic mountain. The book’s central appeal is discovery through natural-world imagery and science.

This is a free-verse school story about friendship changing, family crisis and finding a way to express difficult feelings. Nate’s love of reading and writing becomes important as he faces anger, worry and transition.

This is an emotionally serious friendship story rather than a straightforward adventure. Its imagined kingdom, school conflicts and family pressures lead into an unsoftened account of bereavement.

This is an imaginative fantasy adventure about siblings entering a winter-bound world and taking part in its liberation. Its moral framework includes courage, sacrifice, repentance, forgiveness and explicitly Christian allegory.

This offers an unusual way into evolution: each decision moves the reader towards another organism, making traits, environments and survival part of an active exploration rather than a page-by-page narrative.

This is a tender but melancholy fable about learning to love when love brings vulnerability. Edward’s changing relationships provide a strong emotional thread, while recurring images and the narrator’s access to his thoughts invite attentive reading.

This is a reflective story about losing a familiar home and friendship, then slowly finding steadiness elsewhere. Its poem-by-poem structure gives Diana’s changing feelings room to emerge through observations, notes and everyday family moments.

This is a short, poetic remembrance of a childhood home where prominent Black cultural and political figures gathered. Its words are spare, while the paintings make the people, rooms and atmosphere expansive.

Expect a fast-moving fairy-tale adventure involving illness, magic, strange creatures, rival pursuers and travel through unsettling settings. Red’s fear, friendship with Goldie and changing understanding of others drive the story.

A visually rich biography about how Peter Mark Roget’s love of words and lists developed into the thesaurus. It combines personal history with ideas about language, organisation, medicine, invention and learning.