Mark Sperring’s rhyming eco-plea on behalf of our planet captures the reader’s attention from the first colourful spread of pages. The vibrant illustrations provided by Natelle Quek are stunning, even when depicting the ugliness of pollution and mass littering. Her representation of ethnically diverse children enhances the narrative, visually underscoring the global nature of the issue and, of course, the solution.
When JoJo’s father loses his job, they are forced to move to a new apartment. A new home also means a new school, and JoJo is nervous about meeting his new classmates, especially because he is self-conscious of his tics. At his previous school, JoJo’s so called best friends teased him about his arm twitching, and he expects a similar experience with his new classmates.
Each individual’s experience of war is unique and in You Don’t Know What War Is, readers learn what Yeva Skalietska lived through when the Russian army invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Yeva was an ordinary girl living in the city of Kharkiv with her grandmother. Her story opens with her twelfth birthday party, ten days before the invasion.
The Lost Girl King is an adventure story set in Connemara in the West of Ireland. Amy and Liam Bell are siblings, gone to stay with their beloved grandmother for the summer. Their grandmother lives in the countryside and the children enjoy the freedoms that this offers. On their first day of this visit, while following a hawk across a river and through a waterfall, they stumble into the mythical land of Tír na nÓg.
The Zebra’s Great Escape is a story of the friendship that grows between Mink, a cheeky little girl, and her furry, feathered, and fanged friends. Their adventure is as tender as it is wild. Together they stand up to cruelty and show the courage you can gain when you care for someone.
Making jigsaws is the only way Sunny can feel complete. When Gran gives her an extra-special jigsaw, it sends Sunny on a journey to find the last part of the puzzle. As Sunny explores Gran’s street and makes new friends, she realises she was missing more than a jigsaw piece.
This Tree is Just for Me is a beautifully told story about a young child seeking peace and quiet in a tree in his back garden to settle down with his book. At first, he wants to be alone with his book, so as many animals from snakes to monkeys look to share his company, he tells them ‘this tree is just for me.’
‘Unicorns are NOT horse creatures with horns. In fact, they look just like you and me.’ Or so we’re reliably informed by nine-year-old Neon Gallup – a girl on a mission to be normal. As this book swiftly demonstrates, Neon is anything but normal, as she bounces from one brilliantly coloured adventure to another in this fantasy adventure for young readers of 7+ years.
In this exquisite retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Leaping Match, a flea, a grasshopper and a frog compete to see who can jump the highest. The ensuing chaos is hilarious, while wit proves the ultimate winner. Narrated through a masterful rhyming text that bounces along as energetically as its characters, The Royal Leap-Frog is an absolute delight to read aloud.
The story of Gaia is the story of how things came to be. Gaia made the delicately balanced world and mothered the confident gods. She struggles to protect the goodness of the world from the damaging arrogance of the Titans and Olympians. But even she is not perfect: she gets caught in her own frustration, makes mistakes, and causes harm when she had good intentions at heart. But more importantly, she learns from her mistakes, adapts and grows.
