Cora and her grandmother live in a house in the woods. The rule is clear: when the first snow falls, never let the light out, never let winter in. Winter, in this tale steeped in magic, folklore and literary references, takes the form of a selfish, lazy, cunning boy: Frindleswylde.
The Monsters of Rookhaven won the 2021 KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Honour Award for Fiction. The Shadows of Rookhaven is a well-crafted sequel that explores themes of family, belonging, loss, and difference. We first meet Billy in the human world where, as a misbegotten, he is an outcast. He lives with the Catchpoles, who are not human, and he has taken Meg, another outcast, under his wing. When this unlikely family unit is captured, and Meg’s safety is threatened, Billy agrees to their captors’ demands so that he can save her.
With There’s a Ghost in This House, Oliver Jeffers is both breaking new ground and using all the classic elements of his style that readers have come to love him for.
On April 12th, 1912, the Titanic sank into the Atlantic Ocean. While the scale of the tragedy looms large in modern history, the loss of life would have been far greater if another ship had not arrived on the scene, risking her own passengers and crew to rescue more than 700 souls from the icy water. In this remarkable debut, writer-illustrator Flora Delargy tells the story of a group of ordinary people who became heroes in a time of crisis, celebrating the best of humanity while also sensitively acknowledging the heartbreak and suffering caused on that fateful night.
Inspired by the birth of his son, Jeffers’s gentle text channels the voice of a parent trying to introduce a newborn to the infinite complexity of life on planet Earth.
Set in Northern Ireland, Kelly McCaughrain’s début novel is a charming and quirky love story with important things to say about identity and belonging. Finch ‘Franconi’ Sullivan, along with his twin sister Birdie, is half of the star trapeze act in his parents’ circus. When he’s not in the air, Finch is either being bullied or trying to avoid making friends with Hector, the clumsy new boy in school who trades maths tutoring for juggling lessons.
When I was a child we didn’t ‘push the envelope’ or ‘test boundaries’, but sometimes we were naughty. And when we were, we were usually chastised for challenging authority. Children’s books reflected this view with a variety of cautionary tales, but luckily nowadays storytelling is not so dark.
After a failed suicide attempt, teenager Adam Murphy wakes to find a ghostly companion whom only he can see and hear. As Adam tries to work through his recovery, the ghost is with him, and acts as the narrator to this story.
Between Tick and Tock is a charming tale about a little girl called Liesel and the bustling city that she lives above. Ashling Lindsay illustrates Liesel and her home in the clock tower in warm peachy colours that stand in stark contrast to the greyness of what lies outside her window. Liesel peeks out at the grey, watching the city’s people below as they rush from one thing to the next. They do not stop to say hello or to help each other.
John Chambers’ latest book chronicles the mad-cap adventures of Manchán, a young boy who loves mucking around in medieval Ireland. Truly horrified at the idea that his mother wants him to become a monk, Manchán would much rather spend his time getting into scrapes with Muck his pig and his best friend Pagan-of-the-Six-Toes.
