What Are You Looking For?

A good choice for discussing how an apparently exciting journey can become exhausting and dangerous, while relationships and shared celebrations help people endure prolonged hardship.

A lively visual story about making a home from mishaps. Its strongest pleasures are comic accidents, inventive machinery, expressive illustrations and the animals’ growing community.

A focused, dual-narrative historical novel about displacement, survival and access to water. Its language is spare, but the experiences include war, deaths and severe deprivation, balanced by perseverance and collective problem-solving.

A gentle environmental story about a small, quiet character whose observations are initially overlooked. Whisper’s eventual advocacy involves friends, creativity and persuasion rather than simply becoming louder.

This is a warm, socially grounded adventure about two girls whose friendship grows after an initially hostile meeting. A herd of cows, family difficulties and community problems combine humour, feeling and an unexpectedly hopeful direction.

This is an action-led coming-of-age story about a troubled child entering an extraordinary spy-training organisation. It offers perseverance, teamwork and personal change alongside danger, bereavement, coercion and language some families may wish to discuss.

This is a fast-moving wartime escape story combining orphanhood, sibling loyalty and espionage. Its child characters repeatedly make difficult choices while trying to survive danger, loss and separation.

A suspenseful school mystery follows three boys of colour who are treated as suspects after a principal’s murder. Their investigation brings together different perspectives while exploring prejudice, unequal schooling, friendship, determination and the pressure of protecting their futures.

A fast-moving rescue adventure about courage, loyalty and learning to trust. Wolves are central companions, while Feo’s journey brings danger, humour and a friendship that develops under pressure.

Expect an imaginative, creature-filled adventure centred on finding sanctuary. Friendship, loyalty, courage and environmental loss sit alongside danger, threatening creatures and occasional insulting language.

A gentle imaginative search story, pairing a missing teddy button with a moonlit garden, animal encounters and the comfort of putting something right. Its appeal appears to lie in wonder, visual discovery and companionship.

A quiet, visually led story about children restoring a neglected pond, following the place through changing seasons. Its appeal lies in close observation, shared effort and the gradual transformation of a familiar outdoor space.

This is a historical novel about a newly freed Black family confronting the gap between legal freedom and lived opportunity. Matty’s story combines fear, discouragement and community life with an eventual movement towards hope.

A wintry fantasy adventure about a loved child facing separation, danger and responsibility. Its strongest apparent offerings are imaginative world-building, loyalty to family and the possibility of restoring goodwill, though the resolution is not shown.

This is a high-stakes fantasy adventure centred on competing responsibilities: returning home, preventing war, rescuing friends and stopping monsters from returning. Its strongest apparent appeal is sustained peril combined with loyalty and impossible-looking choices.

A determined teenager builds an unconventional team around a shared goal, challenging the status attached to school sports. Expect group conflict, struggles over dignity and a story that treats the journey as potentially more important than recognition.

A determined young person tackles isolation, hard physical work and uncertainty while trying to make a home. The story also brings friendship, community support and pressure surrounding German ancestry during wartime.

A faith-based guide for preteens about living out a God-given mission through everyday choices, relationships and perseverance. Each chapter combines direct explanation with a preteen’s story intended to connect the teaching with ordinary life.

A large-scale fantasy adventure combining dragon warfare, military leadership, perilous travel and personal loyalties. Its strongest supplied emphasis is the connection between external battles and the companions’ doubts, betrayals and difficult choices.