Alison Healy

Rowan Ellis has written a frank, inclusive and kind guide to discovering your sexuality and dealing with the good and bad stuff that comes with it. She takes on the role of the cool older sister who tells you everything you want to know, while also giving you the tools to keep yourself safe. The book provides a glossary of terms associated with the LGBTQ+ community, looks at issues such as mental health, homophobia, and consent and also celebrates people who have made a difference to the lives of queer people.

This book is a newly edition edition of six stories written by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh in the early 1900s, produced by children’s literature scholar Brian McManus.

This book, from the popular Little People, BIG DREAMS series, invites young readers to explore the life of British physicist and allround genius Stephen Hawking. The story opens when he is a little boy, looking up at the stars in Oxford. It takes readers through his unspectacular school years and on to university where he shines.

This book introduces children to the concept that their minds are like the sky – sometimes clear and blue, sometimes dark and stormy. Their thoughts can be like white, fluffy clouds (happy), or dark rainclouds (sad and negative). It is a simple but powerful message. Everyone has unhappy thoughts but remember that they pass, just as dark clouds pass. The raincloud thought ‘is just one thought among hundreds and thousands of your thoughts’, it says. ‘And you can just let the raincloud thought float gently away.’

This is a delightful read about the challenges of sharing. Bear finds three mushrooms in the forest and brings them home. Weasel cooks them and Bear puts one mushroom on each plate before giving herself the third one. Weasel is not happy and the pair squabble about the third mushroom. Both have convincing arguments for why they should get the extra mushroom and tempers flare.

This is a book about the big questions everyone asks at some stage in their lives: What will become of me? Is it possible to think of nothing? Why can’t I fly? Is it possible to feel too happy? Britta Teckentrup doesn’t answer the questions, but leafing through this attractive picturebook should encourage many interesting conversations.

There is so much to recommend in this account of how a beekeeper and a former yak herder became the first people to stand on the roof of the world. It is of course an excellent read for any child with a sense of adventure. But it is about much more than the race to conquer the world’s highest mountain. It takes readers through the childhoods of two very different men and follows their lives long after they became the first people to reach the top of Everest in May 1953.

Young Dallas Kelly has a lot to deal with. She is still reeling with grief from her mother’s death when she learns that her local library is closing down. The 11-year-old decides she is not going to take another loss, so she leads a campaign to keep Queen Street Library open. Our reluctant hero does this while contending with a life-changing decision – should she stay with her stepmother, brothers and stepsister in their cramped boathouse or should she move to Texas with her free-spirited aunt?

This is the perfect book if you want to introduce pre-school children to the wonder of space travel.

This is a treasury of favourite poems and stories from the much-loved New Zealand author Joy Cowley. It’s a lovely book to dip in and out of, and is ideal for a bedtime story. The rhymes and stories have something for every reader, from little red tractors to exploding pumpkins to waddling ducks.