Books of the Year 2024

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As we approach the end of a year which will have left many of us feeling anxious, downhearted and concerned for the months ahead, regular contributors to Books for Keeps highlight the books that have given them the most enjoyment in 2024.

Ferelith Hordon, Editor, IBBYLink UK, editorial advisor Books for Keeps

Before Nightfall by Silvia Vecchini and translated by Geoffrey Brock, introduced me to Carlo, a teenager who is both hearing-impaired and is losing his sight. Told in verse by his sister Emma, I entered Carlo’s world as together they navigate a complicated world. It opened my eyes and ears. I experienced the same with The Invisible Story (Jaime Gamboa, Wen Hsu Shen; translated by Daniel Hahn). Here is a picture book making real the experience of what it is to be blind. I found myself returning to the almost blank white pages across which struggles a coloured bird? A story? It will find its unsighted reader at the end through Braille; a clever, unforgettable creation. And finally I’ve chosen A Symphony of Stories by James Mayhew. Here the visual, the word and music leap off the page demanding to be heard and read, the stories to be told. For me this is a concert for the eyes, the ears and the imagination. A perfect ending to the year.

Sanchita Basu De Sarkar, Children’s Bookshop Muswell Hill, SAILFEST

Kate Saunders’ A Drop of Golden Sun (Faber) filled me with a classic pleasure. In a lifechanging summer, a quiet child with great depth of feeling joins a filmset not unlike The Sound of Music. Every child actor, with their private dilemmas and motivations, is explored with a delicate touch, with their adults colouring in the landscape in a tantalising way. A joyful story, but with wistful notes that lingered long after the final page.

Birdie (Andersen Press) by JP Rose is the story of characters left behind – a mixed-race girl in the 50s, who finds herself in a village that has never encountered someone who looks like her. In her loneliness, she makes an unlikely bond with an abandoned pit pony, and their bond turns the community upside down. Written with exquisite detail, musical dialogue, and shining a light on a lesser-known period of history, Birdie is a deeply moving and important novel.

And finally, Dev Kothari’s Bringing Back Kay-Kay (Walker Books) was a remarkable debut – an unfolding mystery, wrapped in a tenacious sister’s hunt for her perfect older brother. Written in an utterly unique voice, and a train journey through India that brimming with detail. It set our book club alight.

Pam Dix, Chair, IBBY UK

These are two of my favourite information books of the year, both magnum opus for their creators. Laura Carlin’s London, a history (Walker Studio, 2024) and Chris Haughton’s The History of Information (DK, 2024), have clearly been years in the making and are so carefully thought through and so imaginative in their approaches to immense time periods and complex subjects. Carlin’s London moves from 2.6m BCE to the death of Elizabeth II, Houghton’s information from 50,000 BCE to the implications of artificial intelligence. The illustrations in both are enlightening and helpful: Carlin’s use a beautifully limited colour palette and relate to each topic; Houghton’s more graphic style attempts to break the information in each section into manageable chunks. Both books make wonderful use of relevant quotes from literature and history. And finally, with my IBBY hat, thinking of books from around the world, a brilliantly illustrated book from Spain, not yet published in English, Paisages literarios [Literary landscapes] by Nuria Solsona (Zahori, 2023) which explores the landscapes of 25 well-known writers from around the world.

Jake Hope, reading development and children’s book consultant, chair of the Carnegies Working Party

Beti and the Little Round House (Walker Books), by Atinuke and illustrated by Emily Hughes has the feel of an instant classic. Set in the Welsh countryside, Beti and her family, Mam, Tad and Jac the baby, live together in a small roundhouse where they are at one with the environment and flora and fauna that surround them. Told across four seasons, the book has effortless structure and charm which invites readers in. There’s warmth, wit and a real evocation of family love. Full of life and light, this is as ideal for early independent reading as it is for sharing, a real winner!

School for Puppies (Andersen Press) by Satoshi Kitamura is a quirky story about starting school. Told and shown from a candidly canine perspective it is filled with Satoshi’s wry wit and whimsy which contains careful and considered comment on the emotions of new and uncertain experiences, a uniquely comic tale with twists in its telling.

Fen Coles, Letterbox Library

UK picture books with LGBTQ+ characters have been meagre in 2024 although the centring of those representations and their celebratory contexts has also felt uplifting. (A caveat: all the gay couples featured are male). Steve Antony’s Rainbowsaurus (Hodder) stars a two-dads family (racial diversity implied) who scale a rainbow and journey along its stripes until a final encounter with a roaring, rainbow-spitting dinosaur. Dean Atta’s leap in to picture books, Confetti (Orchard Books), subtitled ‘A colourful celebration of love and life’, pops with technicolour as confetti flurries shower down on Ari (a Black child) during milestones in her life, crescendoing in ‘a Pride parade of two people’, the wedding of her uncle and his (white) male partner. Cart/Jenkins, looking at the evolution of fictional queer representations in The Heart Has Its Reasons (2006) suggest a ‘peak’ in which LGBTQ+ lives are not simply made visible nor assimilated but resonate with a ‘queer consciousness’. Poet Rachel Plummer’s debut picture book, The Big Day (Little Tiger), revels in this bold context of family and community. A small human of indeterminate gender is invited to a wedding between two male giants (mixed race). The fairytale world they enter is saturated in a queer aesthetic which embraces Aunt Clara modelling drag, two female elves leaning in for a kiss, ‘folk of every persuasion’, a wedding breakfast menu which opens with ‘rainbow root soup’ and which lists dietary choices of Halal and Kosher alongside ‘rainbow-floss intolerances’. This is marriage equality wrapped up in a ‘proper’ story told in bopping-along verse and with a quality production which boasts flaps, foldouts and die cuts. Who wouldn’t want to be invited to the party?

Amy McKay, school librarian, past UK School Librarian of the Year and former Carnegies National Coordinator

From the many excellent books published for young people this year, two have really stood out for me. Both are incredible empathy builders about contemporary teens from debut authors. Glasgow Boys (Faber) by Margaret McDonald is a beautiful story about Banjo and Finlay, two young men who are aging out of the foster care system and trying to find their place in the world. I loved the LGBTQ inclusion and the strong sense of place. It’s a bittersweet, yet hopeful read, that will live on in my heart for a long time. Leanne Egan’s Lover Birds (Harper Fire) is an adorable, sapphic enemies-to-lovers romance set in Liverpool. It’s funny, light-hearted and proudly Northern, with the best ADHD representation I have read. I enjoyed groaning at the romantic missteps of Eloise and Isabel, and thought the British 6^th Form experience was perfectly captured. I can’t wait to see what comes next from these exciting new authors!

Mathew Tobin, Senior Lecturer in English and Children’s Literature, Oxford Brookes University

This year, children’s literature has offered young readers portals into worlds of nature, voice, and discovery, with a few titles standing out for their ability to inspire curiosity and wonder. The Spaceman (Walker Books) by Randy Cecil takes us on a journey of unexpected beauty as a tiny explorer discovers a world teeming with life. With gentle humour and wonder, Cecil invites readers to pause and appreciate the marvels of the small things nature offers us, brought to life through rich, textured illustrations that capture the spaceman’s growing awe. In You’re a Poet (Walker Books) by Sean Taylor and Sam Usher, children are encouraged to embrace their unique voices, discovering the playful possibilities of language alongside Piglet and his friend Squirrel. This delightful balance of story and rhyme makes poetry accessible and engaging for young readers, showing that poetry lives within us all, waiting to be found in everyday words and simple moments. Finally, The History of Information (DK) by Chris Haughton masterfully distils the journey of human communication into a visually engaging adventure, sparking curiosity in young minds. It may well be Chris’s magnum opus, painstakingly presented and considered – a modern masterpiece. Together, these books celebrate the joy of exploration, creativity, and finding one’s place in the world.

Emily Drabble, Head of Children’s Book Promotion and Prizes, BookTrust

Birdie (Andersen Press) by JP Rose, Andersen Press, completely stole my heart. It’s like all my favourite books from my childhood rolled into one: Carrie’s War, Black Beauty and Anne of Green Gables. So it’s the story of Birdie, a lovely girl who has never known her parents, her mum was white and her dad was a black GI in the second world war and she has grown up in a children’s home for mixed race kids in Leeds. Now aged around 10, she is sent to live with her great aunt in Yorkshire in the 1950s where is confronted with racism and treated like an outsider. Then she finds the village’s last pit pony Mr Duke, heartbreakingly living down in a mine in complete darkness, It’s so emotional, so beautifully written and Birdie’s voice is so strong. It’s utterly perfect, a modern day classic and everyone has to read it right now!

I’ve also chosen King of Nothing (Hot Key Books) by Nathanael Lessore. After his dad is convicted for violent assault Anton is the bad boy of his South London secondary school, everyone fears and respects him. But when his mum forces him to join Happy Campers he ends up forming an unlikely friendship with the weird white boy who also used to go to his primary school. Lessore explores toxic masculinity in the most readable, relatable way and this is so funny, warm, moving, exciting, basically just a brilliant book for teenagers. It’s fall down on the floor funny and the dialogue is pitch perfect. The reader gets to walk in Anton’s shoes and it’s quite a journey, a classic coming of age as he starts to get his life in order and think beyond school. All in all, I find it quite wonderful in every respect.

Nicholas Tucker, honorary senior lecturer in Cultural and Community Studies at Sussex University

Stories that describe scenes and moments from the past so unfamiliar they could easily be missed have always been a staple of children’s literature, and here’s a very good one indeed. In Wild Song (David Fickling Books), Candy Gourlay goes back to 1904 when two children from the still very traditional tribal areas of the Philippines take their chance of travelling to America. Once there they appear in what can only be described as a human zoo, one of the attractions offered by the St Louis World Fair. American scientists interested in eugenics use this opportunity to undertake further research on them, but Samkad and Luki, the boy and girl involved, rebel and finally escape. An excellent sequel to the author’s previous Bone Talk, this is historical writing at its best.

Andrea Reece, Managing Editor, Books for Keeps

I’ve chosen two very different books. Clotilde Perrin’s The Remarkables (Gecko Press) is a flamboyantly large and wonderfully illustrated book that introduces 38 extraordinary and unforgettable children. Prepare to meet the Foldaway Child, the Springy Child, the Flying Child, the Electric Child, ‘I’m a live wire!’. Across wonderfully varied pages they list their capabilities and give us extra insights into their personalities – favourite things, relationship with parents, what they like to get up to with their friends. Each page is a visual and imagination-sparking treat. In a year that’s seen another surge in fantasy Rachael King’s The Grimmelings (Guppy Books) stands out. This New Zealand set story, starts with ‘a shiver of darkness’ as a boy goes missing. Ella, her mother and grandmother are already regarded with suspicion by their neighbours, ‘a house of witches’ is the rumour, and maybe there’s something to that. Tensions rise as the boy remains missing, and then there’s the sudden arrival of a stranger, fifteen-year-old Gus. Is he a friend for Ella, or something much more threatening and dangerous? Drawing powerfully on Scottish myths, particularly that of the terrifying Kelpie, King’s story immerses readers in its world, blurring the borders between real and myth. An unforgettable and original novel.