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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 gentle, visually clear introduction to adoption, centred on the Teazle rabbits welcoming a baby bunny. It may help begin conversations about joining a family and feeling wanted.

A magical friendship story combines snowy adventures with questions about fear, loneliness, community and letting go. Tasha's bond with Alyana is central, while winter's persistence may affect other people around them.

This is a serious, emotionally charged story about a boy seeking acceptance and a grandmother carrying painful memories. Its Zimbabwean settings and two connected personal histories foreground prejudice, fear, guilt and forgiveness.

Expect a vivid underwater fantasy adventure led by a determined engineer, with a submarine expedition, imaginative creatures, perilous conditions and a group learning to trust one another.

A lively fantasy about an ordinary child entering an extraordinary school, balancing comic invention with peril, uncertainty and the discovery of friendship. Its invented gods and visual humour are central attractions.

A fast-moving science-fiction adventure that places a thoughtful robot between fearful children, human survivors and hostile machines. Its strongest offering is a child-accessible route into questions about personhood, loyalty and moral choices during conflict.

This is a fast-moving survival adventure rooted in Welsh landscapes and folklore. Its emotional centre is a sibling group dealing with danger, responsibility and questions of belonging while trying to protect one another.

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.

This is a gentle story about staying emotionally connected when physical contact is not possible. It offers several concrete, non-touching ways to show affection, while keeping the reason and duration of separation unexplained.

A dark, imaginative adventure for readers who enjoy secret societies, mythological creatures and determined protagonists. Its strongest hooks are the hunter trials, the forest’s threats and Winnie’s effort to reclaim her family’s standing.

This is an energetic, emotionally serious story about being understood. Iris’s efforts to connect with Blue 55 combine Deaf experience, whale science, sound technology and a suspenseful journey.

This is a gothic historical mystery about a child displaced after a death, searching for the truth about her identity while supernatural events expose troubling family secrets.

This is a colourful, humorous graphic-novel adventure about Berry finding a companion, Terry causing havoc, and Berry trying to prevent his departure. It offers playful fantasy, energetic visual storytelling and a friendship-centred problem to follow.

A fast-moving futuristic spy thriller follows Augusta as she lives under a secret identity and confronts a violent hostage situation. Alongside action and humour, it explores family separation, responsibility after a fatal mistake, surveillance and the costs of technological progress.

A fast-moving supernatural mystery about a teenager searching for her missing mother, then uncovering concealed family history and a strange inheritance. It offers suspense, folklore, friendship and a seaside setting, with the pace reportedly slowing after the opening.

This offers a school-start story about friendship and belonging, with a particular focus on how Pelly’s difference affects her relationships with Tangle and Eno.

This is a colourful, surreal graphic-fantasy adventure about belonging, friendship and trust. Its comic situations and unusual magical community sit alongside a possible trap, anxious feelings and a conflict that may slow the story’s momentum.

A bright, rhythmic school-community portrait where children learn, play, share food and celebrate together. Its central refrain gives the book a clear, reassuring shape, while the illustrations carry much of the representation.

Expect atmospheric Cornish tales where folklore, ghosts and magic meet farms, the sea and family life. The collection includes linked stories, including one about William, whose disability brings exclusion and cruelty from others.

Choose this for a visually supported introduction to Black British history that connects overlooked people and communities with larger questions about slavery, migration, war and how national histories are made.

Choose this for a reader who enjoys high-seas adventure, mermaids, treasure hunts, riddles and brisk action. The story also offers a character-led exploration of identity, friendship, prejudice and belonging.

This is a literary mystery built around reconstruction rather than straightforward answers. Its fractured voice, fairy-tale patterns and shifting interpretations invite close attention to what Cadence notices, misunderstands or cannot remember.

A candid, structured introduction to LGBTQ+ identities and experiences, combining explanation with practical guidance. Its strongest offering is breadth: it addresses identity, prejudice, coming out, relationships and sexual health in one supportive, conversational book.

This is a character-led environmental mystery about two young people who feel different or guarded. It combines wildlife protection, a beach discovery, family secrets and friendship, while giving Ivy’s difficult earlier experiences meaningful emotional weight.

A bright, direct introduction to adoption and family belonging, using repeated language and diverse family images. Its emotional centre is welcome, but its one-sided account of need may not fit every family’s experience.

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.

A determined young protagonist moves from harsh workhouse conditions into a competitive school, where inventive technology, friendships and hidden political danger drive a fast-moving dystopian adventure.

A stranger arrives by sea and is confined, mistreated and expelled as the islanders’ fear becomes hatred. Their final wall leaves a bleak image of exclusion rather than reconciliation.

Its emotional centre is the search for a new meaning of home.

A gentle, sensory celebration of everyday happiness. Children encounter rain, earth, puddles, plants, stars, movement, books and cuddles, alongside families spending time together. The book’s central invitation is to pause, notice and share what feels joyful.

A thoughtful verse novel about the upheaval of starting secondary school. Nate encounters friendship, rules, family change, anger and conflict, while a returning figure from the past makes life more complicated.

A high-stakes entertainment story follows Candace as stardom, school, relationships and public activism collide. It offers glamour alongside questions about industry reform, self-expression, cultural identity and the cost of standing by one’s beliefs.

Expect a trope-rich teen romance centred on an online fake relationship, a Korean café, fandom and belonging. Its stated interests also include multicultural identity, friendship heartbreak and representation of queer characters.

A gentle nature story combines a small character’s change of circumstances with information about oak trees, seasons and the many species associated with them.

A lively detective adventure centred on sisters, friendship and a tightly connected high-rise community. The mystery moves through clues, suspects and reversals, balancing comic sibling exchanges with the seriousness of murder and its effects.

A lively read-aloud about a lost dog’s imagined adventures, using rhyme, humour and expressive illustrations to explore survival, landscape, curiosity and the pull of home.

This is an emotionally direct school-and-family story about being misread, finding ways to communicate and learning to recognise a person beyond appearance or speech. Harriet’s perspective gives disability, irritation, humour and courage a central place.

This is a colour-rich magical quest about a child seeking companionship, forming a close bond with a dog, and responding when that relationship no longer fits her home. It offers a gentle framework for discussing change and belonging.

This is a character-led coming-of-age romance about uncertainty rather than a straightforward love story. Ellie’s relationships, creative ambitions, family life and friendships overlap, offering humour, emotional complication and culturally specific family tensions.

This is an adventure-led historical novel centred on Deaf community, sign language and human dignity, while exploring how inherited prejudice shapes relationships between communities.

A puzzle-led mystery for readers who enjoy secrets, shifting timelines and an atmospheric setting. Marlowe’s self-deprecating humour and developing relationship with Akilah sit alongside family tragedy, present-day danger and questions about how the past shapes the present.

This is an adventurous, emotionally charged animal-led quest. It offers talking animals, friendship and humour alongside a bleak altered world, separated families, imprisonment, disease and threats to survival. The ending appears to open into a continuing story rather than resolving every possibility.

This is a tender story about finding comfort amid displacement, then recognising another child's loneliness. Its emotional centre is Lubna's difficult decision about a treasured object.

This is a serious, emotionally intense story about forced movement, family separation and trying to belong in an unfamiliar country. Its unhappy ending may matter to readers who need preparation for difficult material.