What Are You Looking For?

A lively, premise-led adventure about a young K-pop fan and her headteacher experiencing each other’s lives. Expect humour from their contrasting ages and personalities, alongside questions about friendship, family relationships, authority and seeing life from another person’s position.

This is an emotionally intense, socially engaged story of young people facing bereavement, family instability, discrimination and addiction. Its perspective shifts and layered histories invite sustained attention, while compassion, accountability, faith and hope remain important strands.

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.

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 lively, first-person school story combines farcical problem-solving and slow-burn romance with serious family instability. Its emotional centre is Aideen’s habit of helping others while struggling to address her own circumstances.

A lively story about affection, assumptions and comic cat chaos. It offers a warm intergenerational relationship, visual silliness and a clear opportunity to notice that loving intentions do not replace asking what someone wants.

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

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.

This is a gentle shared-reading book about families expressing love through ordinary care. Its main offering is visible family variety alongside repeated, concrete examples of affection, help and time spent together.

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 serious historical novel about Hiroshima’s bombing and its long aftermath for one family. Its movement between prose, poetry and haiku gives the story a distinctive shape, while the paper cranes connect grief, promises and hope.

Expect a brisk, comic fantasy in which an ancient Egyptian pharaoh becomes an unexpected household guest. Its appeal lies in absurd situations, family reactions and a light adventure involving grave robbers.

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.

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 thoughtful migration story combines everyday hardship with magical realism. Leelu’s loneliness, her brother’s difficulties and the family’s uncertainty make belonging feel complicated rather than instantly solved.

A warm, visually led celebration of how people show love: through friendship, kindness, consideration, comforting gestures, family events and ordinary routines. Six families and recurring named children give young listeners details to notice across different settings.

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.

A warm, busy story about making something together when home and family security are under pressure. Its strongest appeal is the blend of theatre-making, farm life, friendship and practical determination.

This is an imaginative animal adventure with two contrasting protagonists: a calf escaping slaughter and a rejected boy pursuing him. The journey opens questions about compassion, human treatment of animals and how relationships can change thinking.

A gripping wartime adventure built around an unlikely friendship. Robert and David’s shared displacement creates empathy and emotional depth, while espionage, pursuit and cliffhangers provide momentum.

This is an outdoor adventure about a child investigating her grandmother’s disappearance, helping eagles in difficulty and discovering a stronger sense of belonging in the mountain community.

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.

A tense survival adventure pairs a fast-moving journey with vivid Australian landscapes, environmental collapse and a close sibling relationship. The dogs are important companions, while family separation and uncertainty keep the emotional stakes high.

This is a poignant historical family story about isolation, hardship and perseverance. Its emotional centre is Laura’s longing to help, belong and reunite her family, alongside compassion for a vulnerable turtle.

A gentle family story centred on two male penguins who care for an egg and raise Tango. Its main emphasis is belonging, parenting and adoption, with wider questions about what makes a family.

A gentle adoption story that acknowledges frightening beginnings, uncertainty about change and lingering sadness or anger, while offering comfort through foster carers, social-worker support and a loving adoptive family.

Read this as a warm, symbolic conversation between an adult and child about making a life together. Concrete building, imaginative journeys and emotional “tools” sit alongside ideas of protection, hope and forgiveness.

A quiet, participatory family story in which closeness is conveyed through shared routines rather than explanation. The sparse text and cropped illustrations invite a child and adult to notice details and create spoken stories together.

This is a gentle family story built around an everyday journey. Each relative brings a different pace, route and kind of companionship, while Papa’s shoulder ride becomes the child’s especially cherished school-day experience.

A magical historical-fantasy adventure about identity, family and friendship, with mysteries uncovered through flashbacks. Expect spells, Fairyland, talking animals, shapeshifting and a curse rather than a realistic everyday setting.

A gentle Chilean folktale about finding companionship, caring for someone who is not yours to keep, and living through separation. Its sea imagery and illustrations may invite close, unhurried attention.

A warm, nature-focused story about belonging and care. Roz learns by observing the island’s animals, while raising Brightbill gives the story a family relationship and a reason to explore migration, instincts and seasonal change.

A gentle family story centred on Rosie’s imaginative wrapping game, moving through familiar objects, caring relatives, bedtime upset, and the arrival of a new baby sister.

A tense story about girls seeking safety and belonging under Sol’s control. As new relationships and demands unsettle the cabin, the book follows questions of loyalty, selfhood, survival and whether protection can become coercion.

A sombre, imaginative story about sisters, a sleeping princess and a dreamworld shaped by inner struggles. Expect more emotional and psychological exploration than fast-moving adventure, with fairy-tale wonder alongside painful material.

This offers a warm, satisfying fairy tale with magical transformations, unusual characters and artwork rich in small visual details that create an intimate, familiar feel.

A humorous, emotionally serious story about a boy facing bullying, family disruption and caring responsibilities, with a fantastical wish premise. It may offer reassurance while still presenting difficult circumstances that merit thoughtful discussion.

Expect a richly illustrated, surreal story rather than a straightforward cosy tale. The Greenling brings abundance and connection, yet its arrival and departure carry an ominous, folkloric atmosphere.

This is a war novel centred on a young woman’s divided loyalties: caring for the wounded, protecting family and considering escape. It offers an emotionally intense perspective on civilian danger, responsibility and hope.

A fantastical mystery carries a grieving teenager through questions of compassion, identity and who gets to control another being’s story. The emotional centre is mother loss rather than the supernatural premise alone.

This is a humorous, emotionally serious story about a guarded young person whose magic, friendship and care for her grandmother bring questions about love, loss and opening up.

A warm picture-book story about welcoming a mysterious, vulnerable stranger, forming attachment, experiencing sudden separation and extending hospitality to others like him. Its imaginative setting leaves room to discuss belonging without explaining everything about Mister Toots.

A gentle family story about love, loss and renewal: a child learns about Grandad and Gramps’s life together, then helps Grandad move towards new adventures while keeping shared memories alive.

This is a gentle, lyrical story about Polar Bear and Cub discovering the changing world together. Seasonal imagery frames the central reassurance that a parent’s love does not change.

A mythic sea adventure carries Phoebe through danger, quests and encounters with gods and monsters, while her real-world worries about Cass, memory and loss remain central.