What Are You Looking For?

A playful rhyming tale about Lulu bringing zoo animals home after hearing they want freedom. Its comic domestic predicament develops into a new idea for where her animal friends might live.

Caraval offers an immersive fantasy built around uncertainty: Scarlett must find her missing sister while trying to decide what within the game is real. Sisterly protection, escape from control and choosing one’s own path are central strands.

A farm hen becomes too tired to lay eggs, is taken home, and receives care while her feathers grow back. Grass, worms, bugs, puddles, friends and freedom mark her new life, followed by an unspecified joyful surprise.

A powerful testimony about enslavement, bodily suffering and the struggle for freedom, carried by Mary Prince’s distinctive voice but shaped by an editor and abolitionist publication context.

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.

This is a playful environmental story in which Emily takes her imagined whale seriously, while Greenpeace offers factual explanations about migration, space and animals’ freedom.

This is an emotionally charged historical animal adventure: Delta uses courage and resourcefulness to search for separated friends while Pompeii faces catastrophe. It offers suspense, relationships and a window onto Roman life, including the unequal position of enslaved people.

This is an emotionally attentive story about a child whose secluded woodland life is abruptly disrupted. It explores unfamiliar family relationships, different ways of experiencing the world, and the possibility of connection without requiring October to become someone else.

This is an imaginative, unsettling science-fiction story about cloned people, social control and the meaning of a ‘real’ life. Its strongest appeal is likely its unusual premise and willingness to leave difficult questions unresolved.

This is an imaginative coming-of-age fantasy in which Arthur’s education happens through encounters with animals, Merlin and the world around him. Its strongest offering is a warm, humorous exploration of how experience might shape wisdom and leadership.

A whimsical, suspenseful fantasy about escaping ordinary life and confronting danger, with a bittersweet focus on childhood and growing up. Its imaginative appeal sits alongside language and attitudes that require historical distance.

This is a sustained post-apocalyptic survival story in which blindness, predatory plants and human power struggles reshape everyday life. It offers danger, moral choices and competing ideas about how society might be rebuilt after catastrophe.

This is an imaginative, unsettling quest about two dependent beings trying to build a home rather than achieve isolation. Expect comic absurdity alongside menace, moral complexity and sustained questions about freedom, family and survival.

This is a fast-moving historical adventure about two young people and an elephant travelling towards safety while others pursue them. Expect suspense, changing loyalties, grief, humour and questions about who has the right to claim an animal.

This is a thoughtful, wistful fantasy about a child resisting change. Its strongest appeal may be the combination of village detail, imaginative uncertainty and emotional honesty, while its pace and melancholy mood may suit readers who enjoy reflective stories.

A reflective mystery about a family facing a child’s worsening health, with magical or unexplained elements entering an isolated summer. The emotional centre is Janine’s determination to reach Ricky when fear and protection keep them apart.

A magical rescue adventure about Gwen, Flora and Moonlight searching for Evie and the other Spell Sisters. Its main ingredients are friendship, courage, enchanted powers and a struggle to save Avalon from Morgana Le Fay.

This is a wartime coming-of-age story about a young girl who forms a significant connection with a German prisoner who has escaped. It brings personal empathy, divided loyalties and family pain into a dangerous historical setting.

This is a family-centred story about a young person confronting a parent’s substance addiction after military service. Its central tension lies between wanting recovery, preserving a close relationship and protecting Paige’s future plans.

This is an atmospheric adventure about being uprooted, gaining unexpected freedom and the mystery of a house's hidden history, with vivid island wildlife adding wonder and strangeness.

This is a fantasy adventure about responsibility, leadership and resisting harmful power. Its imaginative appeal comes from dragons, magic and a team quest, while danger and enslavement create a darker backdrop.

This is a family-centred historical story about confinement, freedom and feared inherited illness. Its child narrators place responsibility, secrecy and uncertainty inside a household shaped by Sarah’s distress and Patrick Henry’s public reputation.

A wartime story about a child seeking freedom and family after being kept indoors because of her twisted foot. Ada’s new life brings learning, trust and danger, while the possibility of returning to her mother remains unresolved.

This is a fantasy rescue adventure about a young prince challenging parental authority to help someone in danger. It offers peril, a fantastical setting and an ending that leaves room for more adventures.