What Are You Looking For?

This is an energetic introduction to rewilding that combines serious environmental information with cartoons, unusual natural examples and clearly explained scientific ideas. Its central message is hopeful: restoring nature could help both ecosystems and people.

A playful food-finding caper with expressive squirrels, jokes and a gentle visual style. Its central scheme involves altering fortune messages to influence people, creating opportunities to discuss cleverness, honesty and consequences without treating the antics as realistic guidance.

This is a themed sampler and guide to Shakespeare, not a complete sequence of play plots. It offers short passages, explanations, insults and one-liners, making it possible to explore individual ideas without reading every play first.

This is an energetic animal adventure about responsibility, deception and persistence. Marty’s first working day becomes hazardous after a prank, while friendship and comic illustrations help keep the story lively.

This is a clue-led historical adventure about a young protagonist acting under pressure to help her imprisoned father. It offers travel, ancient objects, a companionable magpie and a mystery that links art and evidence.

This is an emotionally intense historical romance about love across class and national divisions, set against famine and poverty. Its verse form may make the reading flow quickly while concentrating strong feelings.

A warm but potentially emotionally charged story about a neurodivergent teenager responding to unfairness, protecting her sister and challenging a culture in which bullying can be enabled by silence.

This is a gentle family story about adapting to hearing loss without losing closeness. Jacki and her mother use sign language, while Jacki discovers that music can also be shared through vibration, movement and visual communication.

A small-town début novel that has been recognised for honest, authentic treatment of important themes.

This looks like a monster-themed read involving Mis Mary-Kate Martin and the Woolington Worm.

A serious, introspective time-loop novel about responsibility after a classmate’s death. Its repeated-day structure gives Spence opportunities to notice harm, question his loyalties and reconsider how he treats people around him.

A tense wartime adventure about a young Muslim protagonist whose family and community face Nazi occupation. Safiyyah undertakes dangerous errands, while the mosque becomes a place of sanctuary for persecuted Jewish people.

This is a romance shaped by disability, bereavement and online friendship. Chess lets Juliet and Ronan reveal different parts of themselves, while the wider cast reinforces the idea that appearances can conceal difficult experiences.

This is a queer historical romance centred on an unexpected friendship: Gwen and Art support one another while navigating betrothal, family expectations and separate attractions. Its light banter and gradually developing relationships contrast with a later, abrupt political and violent turn.

A visually led, informative tour of dance: readers encounter named performances and styles, learn about technique and history, meet influential dancers, and look behind the scenes at costumes and props.

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.

This is a family-history story in which discovering wartime secrets changes how Liv understands her grandmother, loyalty and courage. It combines contemporary friendship worries with Jewish sisters’ separation, Resistance work, loss and rebuilding a life.

A comic story about a child whose family values sporting trophies, while his own strength is painting. It explores pressure, difference and self-belief through exaggerated illustrations and an inventive response to an overbearing parent.

A broad introduction to the brain combines scientific history, biological explanation and striking comparisons with other animals. Its range may help a curious reader connect brain science with everyday questions about bodies, minds and technology.

This is a substantial, browseable introduction to Black history, balancing familiar and less-known people and events. It ranges from anti-slavery movements and racism to science, sport, art, music, activism and political change.

This is an emotionally serious historical story that helps readers encounter Partition through three children’s friendships and families. Expect cultural and religious detail, danger and loss, alongside courage, human connection and an unresolved sense of what may happen next.

Expect an energetic adventure built around Lunar’s survival, a dragon-human bond and the threat facing Mars. The story offers dangerous journeys, planetary mythology and young characters learning that protecting home may involve wider responsibilities.

This is a visually led wartime family story for a primary-school audience, with pictures and words intended to work together.

Expect direct participation, visual jokes and repeated surprises as the book tries to make readers picture tigers. Its creative arc moves from deliberately poor drawings towards a more accomplished final image.

Consider this for a teenager drawn to ghost mysteries and belonging between cultures; check comfort with haunting, bereavement and romantic relationships.

Use the comic meanness to explore how behaviour can change, rather than labelling a child as good or bad.