What Are You Looking For?

Expect a seasonal picture-book story about two mice and an Easter basket contest.

A real-life sports memoir about football skill, recognition and the changing circumstances that followed public attention. Its distinctive angle is a girl succeeding in a boys’ league while navigating visibility beyond the field.

This is a competitive ensemble story about ambition, shifting loyalties and relationships under pressure, set within an academy where continued membership can be withdrawn at any time.

A lively competition story for readers who enjoy solving problems alongside a determined contestant. Its emotional engine is Gil’s wish to alter his family’s circumstances, while the games test knowledge, persistence, judgement and relationships.

This is a sports-centred story about talent, friendship, family change and grief. Selena’s return to softball offers a hopeful direction, while the death in her family gives the story emotional weight.

This is a teen coming-of-age story about a perfectionist girl pursuing a prom date while coping with parental restrictions, social awkwardness, appearance worries, friendship and questions about faith.

A horse-centred mystery set around training and a major club competition, with friendship and teamwork alongside sabotage and an injured rider.

A direct, encouraging guide for young men, combining personal experience with advice about identity, education, friendships, family, money and sexual behaviour. Its strongest offering is a supportive mentor voice addressing difficult social pressures.

This is a story about rebuilding sisterhood after family separation. Its magical identity swap creates comic complications while Jamie and Siri confront damaged relationships, changing ambitions and the challenge of becoming themselves.

This offers an accessible introduction to a pioneering doctor and inventor, combining a poetic life story with scientific and historical detail. Its strongest appeal is the connection between personal ambition, medical discovery and wider questions of equality.

A suspenseful mystery about a teenager whose recurring nightmare appears linked to a summer camp, a dead woman and a murderer. The story emphasises investigation, friendship, danger and solving clues.

A warm football adventure uses Pickles’s humorous viewpoint to explore a family trying to stay together while money problems and housing insecurity affect everyday life.

A comic family-and-school story about a child navigating ambitious parents, a new school and competing ideas about attention. Its main appeal is the child’s perspective on adult expectations and the awkward question of whether independence can become neglect.

A football-centred story about pressure, responsibility and learning to co-operate, with Roy juggling his place in the team, college, family duties and coaching. It offers both match-focused excitement and everyday-life concerns.

Lara balances football training with her friends’ ideas for a school business competition. The book follows her effort to pursue sporting ambitions while managing friendship, feelings, competition and apparent pressure from people who enjoy seeing her struggle.

This is a dark family mystery centred on five adopted teenagers shaped into prodigies by an intrusive educational system. Its strongest material concerns identity, pressure, sibling rivalry and solidarity after their father’s death.

This is a painful but determined childhood memoir: Adeline faces rejection, deprivation, mockery and harsh treatment, while school achievement, friendships and a few loving relatives help her retain a sense of self.

This is a seaside fantasy adventure about exploration, competition and friendship, with natural-world facts alongside magical rockpoolers. Its central tension comes from wanting to win while searching for something rare before sunset.

This is a concentrated story of an ageing fisherman’s prolonged struggle at sea. It offers quiet reflection, precise physical detail and a serious meditation on perseverance, pride, loss and what achievement means when results do not last.

This is a brisk, fantastical adventure about determination, danger and becoming a firework-maker. Lila’s journey combines perilous tests, a family predicament and a spectacular public performance, with illustrations contributing to the imagined world.

This is a school-based story about a quiet pupil whose achievement brings unexpected visibility. Its central interest is the tension between being encouraged to speak up and retaining the right to be yourself.

This is an adventure about competing for lasting recognition, while unexpected friendships form during a demanding journey. Its mythological basis and animal characters offer a lively route into the lunar-zodiac story.

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.

This is a short, poetic remembrance of a childhood home where prominent Black cultural and political figures gathered. Its words are spare, while the paintings make the people, rooms and atmosphere expansive.

This is a faith-centred sports story about entering unfamiliar surroundings while facing racism, social pressure and difficult choices. Its strongest focus appears to be how Perry understands identity, belonging and responsibility through a Christian lens.

A lively school story about performance, homework and the consequences of making excuses. Zaritza’s schemes create comic trouble, while her disappointment and developing alliance with Eden give the story a more reflective strand.

A sports-centred coming-of-age story about being the first girl described as playing on a boys’ team, with attention extending to friendship, family relationships, self-doubt and the wish to be accepted without changing oneself.

This is a teen romantic comedy centred on books, friendship and the wish for a happy-ending love story.

This is an adventure about teamwork and family attention, with competition, friendship and rivalry leading into a camping experience where Noah and Eric have a survival lesson.

A sports-centred family crisis story: Josh hopes exceptional baseball performance will win a house and help his family after his father’s departure and their move to a smaller home.

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.

This is a school-community story about pupils who respond to a fundraising challenge by sharing personal heritage through a jointly made book. Its central interest is how a collaborative project may help students understand themselves and each other.

A lively life story follows Rickenbacker from adventurous boyhood and family work to mechanical exploits, auto-racing success and later wartime distinction. The book also places his life within early twentieth-century America.

A football-centred story about ambition, exclusion and family support, alongside factual material about African football and celebrated players.

This is a character-led school mystery built around a televised spelling bee, with contrasting pupils handling pressure, public attention and a suspected problem involving the principal.

A fast-moving YA thriller about a teenager entering a secretive training programme, where academic pressure, team-building and suspicion intensify after someone is accused of betrayal.

This is a school-set ensemble story about achievement, reputation, relationships and friendship under pressure, with a journey to find a student who has left unexpectedly.

A light, quick-moving school story about peer acceptance, personal style and the pressure to change presentation in order to fit in.