What Are You Looking For?

This is a comic story about two boys whose efforts to influence their parents’ relationship bring together family upheaval, a school event and the boys’ own changing relationship.

A historical family story about wartime change, German-American prejudice and Carl’s first summer living away from home.

This is a quest-led adventure centred on a young character taking on responsibility for his community. Expect fantasy dangers and battles to be part of the journey.

A lively school adventure uses a missing ant and an unusual journey to bring its class into contact with ant life. The book also aims to explain how ants work together.

This is a high-stakes group adventure about trying to prevent war. The focus shifts from protecting the friends’ own people to a wider effort, while their plan is complicated by divided loyalties.

This story brings together a wetland ecosystem, a newcomer’s view of town divisions and a friendship that opens onto Blackfoot culture and stories.

This is a post-war story about a young person whose understanding of home and family is unsettled by a discovery. It connects private identity with the way a community remembers a difficult past.

This is a baseball team story about belonging and contribution: Little Rhino’s role changes when he cannot play, but he still wants to help his friends.

This is a multi-strand fantasy about resisting an expansionist ruler. Evan seeks help for the threatened queendom, while Alyssa may be able to oppose the empress from inside her stronghold.

Expect an eccentric family adventure built around inventions, animal antics and a Christmas-threatening force.

A Clan faces a crisis while its members try to protect their community. The shifting warrior code adds questions of loyalty and rules to the immediate trouble.

A fast-moving science-fiction adventure about young Jedi racing to prevent a deadly plague from being released, amid a wider battle and a confrontation with a dangerous adversary.

A puzzle-centred adventure puts the four friends on a time-limited mission to find Mr Benedict, with their teamwork central to the challenge.

A lively contest drives the story: the children try to raise money and earn a choice connected with the Strawberry Festival.

A neighbourhood portrait rooted in the author’s early life, these stories look at how Sheffield residents met the arrival of wartime demands and sought to contribute.

A fantasy adventure shaped by divided loyalties, perilous plans and the prospect of war, with the brothers’ relationship under strain.

A child’s excitement about joining a baseball team meets the challenge of sharing it with a bully. The story sets up a practical question about what good teammates do when team life is difficult.

This is a serious family drama about a teenager carrying responsibility for a struggling parent. Its strongest material lies in showing how trauma affects relationships, choices and the possibility of accepting support.

Expect frontier adventure built around a group of young companions, their mission, wilderness travel and encounters with enemies.

This offers animal fantasy built around clans, ancestral voices, prophecy and an emerging internal threat. Its strongest draw is likely the combination of a troubled community, spiritual mystery and a young character with unusual access to warning voices.

An energetic pony adventure combining horse handling, competitions, a film-set setting and mysteries. Friendship is central to Issie’s attempt to manage lively horses, while a troubled actress and possible danger to ponies add complication.

A thoughtful story about how children’s curiosity can become humane attention. Its emotional centre is Carl’s dance, which makes hidden wartime suffering visible while preserving his dignity and complexity.

A gentle but emotionally serious story about a child’s promise, a friendship interrupted by war, and the experience of someone’s absence. Its focus is care and loyalty rather than action.

A fantasy adventure centred on an ageing Clan member’s promise, loyalty and search for a way to help his community. Graystripe’s departure creates a tension between staying faithful to home and seeking answers elsewhere.

A tense frontier survival adventure in which three children evade outlaws, endure severe hardship and discover treasure. It offers resourcefulness, loyalty and historical setting alongside frightening danger, bereavement and family separation.

A suspenseful children’s adventure about siblings investigating unsettling circumstances in a guarded Cornish house. Expect secrets, danger, teamwork and a wartime political backdrop, alongside melodrama and an intentionally improbable child-led challenge to adults.

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.

Expect fast-moving fantasy adventure: Emily and her friends train, discover powers and attempt a dangerous rescue while war approaches. Family tensions and questions of trust sit alongside battles and emotional uncertainty.

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.

This is a school-set novel about how a group experiment changes relationships, authority and public debate. Its central interest is the tension between belonging and independent judgement, with the school newspaper representing a challenge to growing conformity.

A football-centred route into First World War history, this is an emotionally direct story about ambition, enlistment and survival. Its accessible presentation may support readers who want a gripping historical novel without dense prose.

A poetic picture book follows a girl whose ordinary school day is shattered by war. Alone, she travels through dangerous displacement before encountering a school that initially excludes her. The story presents destruction, bereavement and possible drowning indirectly, then turns towards welcome, solidarity and hope through children’s practical kindness.

A tense, politically charged dystopian novel about a Muslim teenager resisting confinement and discrimination. Its emphasis falls on moral courage, collective action and the human consequences of Islamophobia, alongside disturbing scenes of coercion and violence.

This is a fast-moving virtual-reality adventure with a capable but vulnerable protagonist, combining tournament gameplay with a mystery about a threatening player and technology’s real-world consequences.

This is a serious, emotionally focused novel about returning home, confronting painful memories and imagining a future beyond harmful family dynamics. Flooding and climate danger provide an urgent backdrop, while romantic love adds another strand.

This is a breezy, witty murder mystery about two friends trying to become investigators while navigating popularity, school cliques and complicated friendships. Its comic voice contrasts with recurring deaths and deliberately grotesque details.

This offers an engrossing, multi-viewpoint dystopian adventure, with telepathy, wartime politics, secret identities and dramatic reversals. Its strongest appeal appears to be the combination of tense plotting and questions about belonging, tolerance and social control.

A mysterious island adventure where friendship, fear and compassion matter. Children encounter local suspicion, a bullying family relationship, a stranded narwhal and the disruptive shadow of war.

A lively Thames-set fantasy about three friends whose mudlarking leads to an underwater adventure. Expect imaginative world-building, comic eccentricity and an active quest rather than a quiet, realistic story.

Choose this for a reader who wants intense speculative fiction that tests responsibility, loyalty and power rather than offering easy reassurance. Its multiple viewpoints and sustained war narrative make it an ethically demanding trilogy finale.

This is a wartime story about a child whose ordinary village life is disrupted by evacuation, military preparations and a missing cat. It combines danger, friendship and a later family connection across generations.

A cheerful school celebration becomes a lively water fight, with children, teachers, costumes, inflatables and a hose. The rhymes, repeated splashy sounds and colourful illustrations make the event feel energetic and playful.

A gentle magical adventure carries a serious environmental problem: the children must respond as trees are threatened, extreme weather worsens and their village floods. Friendship and changing viewpoints help drive the response.

Expect a fast-moving science-fiction adventure built around giant mechanical beings, survival and shifting loyalties. Alongside danger and suspense, Coll’s journey explores belonging, disability, identity and whether inherited beliefs deserve questioning.

A historically focused story that foregrounds Muslim efforts to rescue Jews in wartime Paris, offering young readers a perspective on the Second World War that is described as little known.