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Reggie Houser has the Power is a story of a boy (Reggie), who is navigating life with ADHD. To be honest, it’s really tough for Reggie, always getting into trouble, never being on time, struggling to make friends, feeling lonely and frustrated. All he wants is to be accepted and to be happy, just like […]
What does it mean to be a man, or in Anton’s case, a thirteen-year-old yoot heading for manhood? Well, Anton thinks he knows. He’s hard, his mandem is hard and he’s the hardest of them all. He’s king of the school. “Nobody can square up to us here, and I prowl these corridors like my […]
Jenny Valentine’s novels offer an experience like no other. Never at a loss for an arresting phrase or an original insight, she takes her readers as far as they could wish to go and perhaps, for some, a little further than they might feel comfortable with. This present story of an ultimately doomed friendship between […]
This is the prequel to Elle McNicoll’s A Kind of Spark. Rarely, does a prequel eclipse the original but this may be the case. In this book, Keedie, who readers will know as Addie’s older sister, is nearly fourteen and Addie who is as yet undiagnosed as autistic, is six. Both girls are struggling. Keedie […]
Somewhere, in a land whose political geography might be recognised by Zorro or Robin Hood, anywhere where tyrants lord it over the poor, lives farm boy, Tom, and his faithful dog Rebel. They live a life of rural tranquility, except for the occasional intimidating visits of the King’s Guards. But rebellion is in the air […]
From the intriguing, atmospheric prologue to its dramatic denouement, this uncanny story grips and intrigues. Strange builds up suspense from the start as troubled teen Faye is uprooted from her home and banished to a sinister school on an eerie Scottish island. With dark, twisted secrets coiled at the heart of the plot, the reader […]
Opening with the visceral imagery of ‘A glance as sharp as a shard of broken glass’ this heart-felt contemporary verse novel is a cautionary tale about the dangers facing young people who find themselves ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’ or indoctrinated into a life of crime. It’s also a love letter to […]
Agile teenage minds may well relish this rapid, taut plot, especially if they know their werewolves from their warlocks, along with a working knowledge of the characteristics of poltergeists (especially one in her postmortem existence, since the nature of her death and indeed her murderer are at the heart of this novel). There’s much that […]
Bringing two poets together in a single collection is perhaps not that unusual, particularly if quite a few of the poems have been published before. What is unusual and appealing about this collection is that the poets and their poems seem to be in a dialogue with one another, a jazz conversation in which they […]
Rebecca Cobb’s illustrations with their distinctively childlike style are immediately recognisable in books from The Paper Dolls to Missing Mummy. As she explains in this Windows into Illustration feature, she found much to suit her illustration style in Mariesa Dulak’s text for There’s a Tiger On The Train. I hadn’t realised how much time I […]
In the first of a new Books for Keeps series, Nicolette Jones puts three picture book illustrations in the spotlight. A piece in the trade magazine The Bookseller (Zoe Knowles, 22 April) recently drew attention to the UK’s top-earning illustrators, and also to the fact that bestseller lists do not identify artists, so research had […]
Joseph Coelho took on the mantle of Waterstones Children’s Laureate two years ago and talked to Books for Keeps then about his ambitions for the role. His last engagement as Laureate will be at the Poetry By Heart Grand Finale on 1 July. His successor takes over the following day. Joseph shares his reflections on […]
Another week, another reading for pleasure report, this time produced by HarperCollins Children’s Books. Their annual review of Children’s Reading for Pleasure, 2024 contains more gloomy reading for those who create, produce or care about children’s books: only 23% of 0-17s read for pleasure ‘daily or nearly every day’ (defined as on 4 or more […]
By Laura Mucha Before becoming a poet, I was an intellectual property lawyer at an international law firm. Most of my old colleagues have now become AI specialists and often tell me what their clients are concerned about. For example, music companies are worried about whether anyone actually cares if music is written by a […]
Children’s book author and illustrator Brian Wildsmith is being celebrated through two new exhibitions in his home town of Barnsley at The Cooper Gallery and Experience Barnsley Museum. Displays are awash with the vibrant palette and limitless imagination which were so recognisable in Brian’s beloved books, including his ABC, The Owl and the Woodpecker, Jungle […]
Jennifer Bell interviewed by Joy Court Having had a very enjoyable Zoom conversation with best-selling author Jennifer Bell just before I attended the latest Insights briefing from Farshore about their Reading for Pleasure research, I was really struck by how much Jennifer herself embodies the importance of developing reading for pleasure in schools. She confessed […]
In the latest in our long-running Beyond the Secret Garden series, Darren Chetty and Karen Sands-O’Connor take a trip to Africa in children’s books. In 2005, Binyavanga Wainaiana produced a satirical manual on ‘How to Write About Africa’ for the magazine Granta. Many of the stereotypes of Africa and Africans that he describes came out […]
Rose Roberto argues that AI has been a feature of YA fiction for some time and looks at some notable examples. Artificial Intelligence or AI seems to have emerged as the big topic in 2023. Hollywood writers have gone on strike over it, and in secondary schools and universities throughout the UK, teachers, lecturers and […]
Launched in 1980, we’ve reviewed hundreds of new children’s books each year and published articles on every aspect of writing for children.
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