Children’s books are often meant to be timeless, but in fact they reflect and even predict the politics of the era. Both Harry Potter and His Dark Materials were as much a product of the Blair/Brown era as The Hunger Games and Alice in Wonderland were of theirs. Which new books will best reflect the new Starmer era?
Slug Life by Moesha Kellaway (HarperCollins, £12.99) is a pure delight now that summer has dried up the slimy pests in gardens and in governments. It’s an inspired debut packed with facts, jokes and illustrations of how the seemingly unappealing can prove to be a steadfast friend. A Wild Walk to School by the ever-enchanting Rebecca Cobb (Macmillan, £12.99) turns the school run into an epic adventure. The slog of arriving on time is transformed by imagination, wit and creativity – something that the emphasis on Stem has attempted to crush out of children. Both are ideal for 3-5s.
Grey (Walker, £14.99, 5+) is exquisitely sensitive to the feelings of depression and loneliness that too many children experience. Laura Dockrill’s poem about a child not feeling “sunshine yellow or balloon orange bright or treetop green”, vividly illustrated by Lauren Child, can also apply to mothers needing reassurance. Doug Salati’s prize-winning Hot Dog (Pushkin, £12.99) shows a miserable little dog and his elderly owner escape the stifling city for an idyllic beach. The dog’s expressions of anguish, joy and love are perfectly observed, and any child of 2-5 will want to revisit this new classic as an escape of their own.
Jen Wallace’s hero in Dinosaur Pie (Little Island, £7.99, 6+) has ADHD, which makes life challenging. When he gets turned into a small feathered dinosaur, it becomes even more so: he can’t play video games with friends, has bad breath and craves sausages. Great to read aloud, and genuinely funny.
The Welsh poet Catherine Fisher has written another gem in Starspill (Firefly, £7.99, 8+). Since the Wolf swallowed the sun 140 years ago, Zac’s town has been shrouded in fog; now the cats want his help to steal one of three “Embers of the Sun” to lift it. Reminiscent of Joan Aiken in its wit and style, it stresses the importance of stories that confront familiar greed and lies. Ross Montgomery’s I Am Rebel (Walker, £7.99, 8+) gives us the best of dogs. Rebel loves his simple life on the farm, but when his beloved Tom joins the rebellion against the King, our loyal, dogged hero will stop at nothing to return him to where his heart is. Utterly delightful.
Older boys dreaming of a better world tend to gravitate towards science fiction. Sarah Merrett’s The Others (Everything With Words, £8.99, 11+) is a compelling adventure concerning Reuben who lives in an observatory where his grandma searches the heavens for extra-terrestrial life. But why must he wear sunglasses all the time? And where has the unconscious, luminous girl he finds come from? It’s thrilling stuff, brimming with empathy for outsiders and weirdos. For 13+, Andrew Stickland’s Mars Alone trilogy (Lightning Books, £9.99) combines rocket-fuelled storytelling with an Isaac Asimov-level enquiry into what it means to be human. Highly recommended.
Change is often challenging. Amie Jordan’s heroine Sage in All the Hidden Monsters (Chicken House, £8.99) features a teenage werewolf, manoeuvring the human world of Upside Manchester and Downside, where the supernatural hang out. When her best friend is murdered, a classic crime caper ensues. Assured, fully imagined fun like this hasn’t been seen since Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series. Also for 13+, Meg Rosoff’s irresistibly funny Almost Nothing Happened is set in scorching Paris where Callum’s holiday is ruined not by the Olympics but by his failure to improve his French, a panic attack and then having to chase after a stolen oboe (Bloomsbury, £12.99).
The playwright Moira Buffini’s debut Songlight (Faber, £8.99, 13+) is a fabulous mash-up of John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids and The Handmaid’s Tale. Its heroine, Elsa, and her lover, Rye, have developed “songlight” – a forbidden form of telepathy. When Rye is discovered communicating with Elsa, he is ostracised as an Unhuman. But war is coming, and many lies promoted by the powerful will be savagely exposed. Buffini addresses urgent topics from misogyny and homophobia to genocide. Written with passion and energy, this dystopia will enthral and inspire a new generation to question the world they are inheriting and to heal it.
[See also: The best children’s books for spring 2024]
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This article appears in the 25 Jul 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Summer Special 2024