What Are You Looking For?

A buoyant, unusual adventure pairs a determined child with a loving guardian and a rooftop community. Its imaginative freedom sits alongside peril, precarious living, family uncertainty and moments of physical harm.

This is a gentle woodland story about preparing for a storm, helping neighbours and recovering after Badger’s home is damaged. Detailed illustrations and a hopeful rebuilding sequence support shared reading and discussion.

Expect a period adventure centred on moving-picture work, sisterly contrast and performance.

This is a character-led friendship story about two girls confronting assumptions shaped by place, money and family life. It offers gradual mutual understanding across sharply contrasting circumstances.

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.

This is a friendship-and-identity story in which a disrupted routine opens space for music, independence and new connections. Its interest lies less in high-stakes danger than in ordinary emotional change and finding a direction.

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, illustration-rich story about rebuilding a neglected hotel through practical work, creative problem-solving and cooperation. Its main tension comes from whether Anna and her team can meet an inspector’s challenge.

A fast-moving dystopian adventure combines a family search with uncertain alliances, a lottery camp and an environmental mystery. Its central pull is whether belonging means escaping Earth or helping protect it.

This is a hopeful environmental story in which small actions become more effective through cooperation. Its imaginative ocean encounter gives practical choices—such as reducing plastic and reusing bottles—a narrative setting.

A poetic picture book follows a girl whose ordinary school day is shattered by war. Alone, she travels through dangerous displacement before encountering a school that initially excludes her. The story presents destruction, bereavement and possible drowning indirectly, then turns towards welcome, solidarity and hope through children’s practical kindness.

This is a brisk story about a child responding to a lost dog’s memory by inventing an invisible companion. Imagination, persistence, family decisions and an older neighbour’s good-humoured acceptance shape the action.

This is a family adventure shaped by sudden loss of security and encounters with people connected to the railway. Its central interest is how the siblings respond to changed circumstances.

This offers a tense speculative adventure about survival, scarce resources and resistance to a powerful regime, centred on a young person whose unusual ability is both helpful and dangerous.

This is a compact first-person adventure combining wartime escape, Himalayan survival and an encounter with a hidden yeti society. Its central imaginative tension is whether Ashley’s influence would help or harm people whose way of life he admires.

This is a grief-focused wilderness adventure in which two young people pursue a hopeful but dangerous mission. Expect emotional recovery to matter alongside physical survival and friendship.

A spirited story about boxing, loyalty and making sense of difficult circumstances. Molly’s investigation brings mystery and emotional pressure together, while the verse-and-prose form gives her voice a distinctive, place-rooted rhythm.

This is a character-centred story about a bereaved young person trying to manage ordinary responsibilities while carrying several earlier losses and a turbulent inner life.

A strange, claustrophobic survival story about people sharing an inescapable place, confronting missing memories and deciding whether a dangerous escape is worth attempting.

This is a high-stakes fantasy finale about survival during spreading environmental catastrophe, as characters oppose Ruin and try to preserve a future for their world. It combines large-scale conflict with questions of faith, responsibility and sacrifice.

A visually rich historical introduction that connects segregation, collective action and civil rights with the unfinished pursuit of freedom and justice.

This is a historical novel about a newly freed Black family confronting the gap between legal freedom and lived opportunity. Matty’s story combines fear, discouragement and community life with an eventual movement towards hope.

A colourful, imaginative fantasy finale about connection, courage and upheaval. It offers an intricate alternate world, escalating danger and emotional relationships, while its unusual language and many plot developments may reward close, patient reading.

A wartime family story about worry, practical help and growing food, with Teresa’s confidence tested by events she cannot control. Gardens connect everyday care with a wider conflict, while the ending appears emotionally serious.

A festive friendship adventure with serious pressures underneath: Mac hopes a shared holiday can repair her family, while the friends face a failing home, money worries, and danger connected with Shani.

A true account of Owen, a baby hippo rescued after the 2004 tsunami, and Mzee, an elderly tortoise who becomes his companion. Their shared routines offer a vivid animal-centred story about connection across difference.

This is a bleak survival story centred on Sam, a young hunter caught between a violent enclosed society and a prophecy that may make Sam its focus. It offers danger, scarcity, social division and questions about whether hope can survive fear.

This is a high-stakes survival adventure built around six very different young people learning to depend on one another in extreme circumstances.

This is a hopeful story about a girl whose ambitions are obstructed by family problems and caring responsibilities. Her appeal for change grows into a community project, while the seriousness of her father’s drinking remains part of the emotional backdrop.