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This is a serious, character-led account of friendship tested by colonial injustice. It offers a personal route into Kenya’s history, showing how fear, racial privilege and silence can damage people across divided communities.

A suspenseful historical novel linking a present-day investigation with a teenager’s experience of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. It combines mystery, racial history and questions about privilege, social inequality, identity and justice.

A warm, unusual story about an orphan girl and a gorilla forming a family, while facing official scrutiny and prejudice. Its humour and tenderness sit alongside uncertainty about belonging and justice.

This offers imaginative fantasy alongside sustained questions about Black identity, friendship, prejudice and self-determination. Its dual perspective gives Tavia and Effie distinct forms of identity exploration, though the opening may feel slow before the action intensifies.

This is a symbolic story about colours whose town becomes divided after one colour claims superiority. Friendship, mixing and cooperation challenge exclusion, making the book particularly useful for starting conversations about racism and belonging.

Expect lively, performative poems alongside serious real-world concerns. The collection can invite laughter, close attention to word choice and discussion about fairness, nature, animal treatment and how poetry communicates ideas.

A lively fantasy mystery for readers who enjoy hidden worlds, supernatural beings, competition and surprises. Its emotional centre is Amari’s search for her brother and her movement from feeling like an outsider towards recognising her strengths.

This is a visually contrasting, rhyming story about a boy who loves the natural world, faces homophobic bullying at school, and develops a plan to reclaim his school through creativity and nature.

A warm, idea-led adventure about friendship across a human–robot divide. Its central relationship invites readers to question inherited beliefs, while action and humour keep the story moving.

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.

Expect a gently comic adventure in which a boy, a dragon and St George confront expectations about what dragons and heroes should be. The story makes room for poetry, friendship and a staged solution rather than presenting fighting as the only answer.

This is a family-centred historical novel about Black children growing up amid racism and hardship. Its conflicts involve a death sentence, racial identity, land ownership, voting rights, work, community pressure and the effort to preserve dignity.