Imogen Carter’s picture books of the year
In the imagination of a small child anything is possible. Animals talk, humans can fly and a bedroom can turn into a forest in the blink of an eye. And it’s in the place where a child’s everyday reality and wild fantasy overlap that great stories are often born: books about tigers unexpectedly popping by for tea, or a snowman springing to life in the night.
Such enchantment was sprinkled over tales of family life to fantastic effect this year. Deep in a cost of living crisis and with so much doom in the real world, we needed it. With its gorgeous, moonlit scenes of a young boy flying over snowy fields on a rescue mission with a real fox after losing his own cuddly toy fox earlier that day, Rob Biddulph’s I Follow the Fox (HarperCollins) has echoes of Raymond Briggs’s Christmas classic The Snowman. In Lanisha Butterfield’s confident debut, Flower Block (Puffin), a lad left with his older brother while mum works the nightshift dreams that his newly planted seeds will bloom. And so they do; sending vines and flowers of every hue bursting through the floors of his tower block in a tender celebration of community, vividly illustrated by Hoang Giang.
Zadie Smith and Nick Laird reunited with artist Magenta Fox for the return of Weirdo, AKA Maud, a delightful pet guinea pig in a judo suit who finds herself on her owner’s school residential in Weirdo Goes Wild (Puffin). And author/illustrator Jarvis again demonstrated his aptitude for capturing a child’s voice with Mr Santa (Walker), which features a little girl grilling the big man after finding him at the end of her bed: “Have you wiped your shoes?” Oliver Jeffers marked 20 years since his bestselling debut How to Catch a Star with a follow-up, Where to Hide a Star (HarperCollins), as well as The Dictionary Story (Walker), a boundary-pushing romp through the words of the English language, with artist Sam Winston.
Two gems from North America stole my heart: Doug Salati’s Caldecott medal-winning Hot Dog (Pushkin), with its exquisite, near-wordless depiction of a sweltering pup escaping the New York heat at the seaside; and the gothic Night Lunch (Frances Lincoln) by Eric Fan and illustrator Dena Seiferling, whose glowing line drawings animate a tale of an owl chef serving delicious feasts to nocturnal creatures from a Victorian food cart.
In nonfiction, I adored Dear Vincent (Thames & Hudson), a dazzling biography of Vincent van Gogh by Michael Bird and illustrator Ella Beech playfully told through letters to to the artist’s brother; Tom Jackson and Maggie Li’s fascinating Volcano Atlas (Quarto); and Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s Cloudspotting for Beginners (Particular), so artfully illustrated by William Grill that reading it feels akin to floating through clouds.
In an unmissable series for Radio 4, The Lion, The Witch and the Wonder, the author Katherine Rundell surveyed the rich history of children’s literature while, in the final episode, lamenting recent National Literacy Trust statistics showing a sharp decline in reading for pleasure among eight- to 18-year-olds. Just 35% of the age group said they read for enjoyment, the lowest level since the survey began. We live in a great age of children’s books and I echo Rundell’s rallying cry that as a society we must do more to help kids fall in love with reading. We need to tempt them away from screens and fire up their imaginations to equip them for the future. For as Rundell so beautifully put it: “a children’s book and a child are a chemical reaction, a thing that can blast through time and space, cruelty and indifference”.
Kitty Empire’s chapter books of the year
Wider trends often trickle down to middle-years books. You could argue, however, that cosy crime – a wider publishing hit – is really a middle-years genre, with authors such as Robin “Murder Most Unladylike” Stevens leading where grownup books have followed.
This year saw a plethora of great who-how-and-why-dunnits, such as the second instalment of the gothic family caper series by Beth Lincoln, The Swifts: A Gallery of Rogues (Puffin). And, oh, the siren song of a title like Murder! By Narwhal! (Hachette). Written and illustrated by Alex T Smith, it followed in The Swifts’s gleeful footsteps. A locked room mystery, The Clockwork Conspiracy by Sam Sedgman (Bloomsbury) tries to solve what looks like a fatal disappearance of a boy’s horologist father: an ingenious thriller set in the heart of government.
The democratic process isn’t normally the stuff of kids’ adventures, but teaching younger people about its importance could not be more pressing. Another of 2024’s most inventive books climaxed with a parliamentary vote. Chibundu Onuzo’s debut for children, Mayowa and the Sea of Words (Bloomsbury), centres on a British-Nigerian family’s secret ability to unleash emotion from books by leaping on them. A triumphant motion against those who foment fear and hate.
The cost of living crisis produced two all-too-realistic accounts of kids at the sharp end. The Wrong Shoes by Tom Percival (Simon & Schuster) stars a resourceful kid with an ill dad on his uppers. Missing footwear, strained friendships and bullies figure; unexpected denouements rule the day. In the affecting The Boy in the Suit (Scholastic), James Fox’s protagonist, Solo, helps his unpredictable mum crash funerals – buffets being their primary source of food. But with their ruse discovered and his mum missing, Solo calls on his own resources, and the untapped help around him.
Sometimes you just know you’re in good hands. YA author Frances Hardinge has taken to publishing short, illustrated books that mix classic children’s writing with her own myth-making. The Forest of a Thousand Eyes (Two Hoots) immerses the reader in a post-apocalyptic society clinging to the remains of a huge wall, built to keep the malevolent forest at bay. Young Feather leaves all she knows to chase down a lying stranger, discovering other straggler bands of humanity as she goes.
Scottish author Elle McNicoll’s strike rate remained just as high, with her 2024 prequel Keedie (Knights Of) returning to the village of her 2020 debut, A Kind of Spark. The neurodivergence of two sisters is the backdrop to a fantastic story of loyalties tested and bravery controversially rewarded.
Few have been more adept at writing entertaining kid lit, of course, than the late Jeremy Strong. His last book, Fox Goes North (Scholastic), followed a group of fellow animal travellers inadvertently accompanying Fox on his own final journey. Brimming with warmth and fellow feeling, Fox Goes North underlined the importance of kindness and good humour in the face of adversity. More valiant animals: I Am Rebel by Ross Montgomery (Walker) features a devoted dog and was Waterstones’s deserving children’s book of the year.
A strange and wonderful book in translation stayed with me the longest this year: Movies Showing Nowhere (Pushkin) by Yorick Goldewijk (translated by Laura Watkinson). A mysterious newcomer opens a cinema in her town and offers Cate the chance to learn the ropes. But this screen projected interactive reels of people’s pasts – and viewers could step inside them. Does Cate dare follow? The persistence of the past and the need for wish fulfilment are this excellent outing’s powerful themes.
Fiona Noble’s YA books of the year
To begin, a look at some of the year’s big hitters from the queens of the young adult world. Holly Jackson returned with The Reappearance of Rachel Price (Electric Monkey), a twisty family saga from the author of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. A mother-daughter duo tackle their final heist in Such Charming Liars (Penguin), a typically electrifying thriller from Karen M McManus. And the trend for all things “romantasy” continued to bloom, creating huge sales for Reckless by Lauren Roberts (Simon & Schuster).
Modern life in Britain was the focus of two outstanding titles from rising stars. Trouble at school sees Anton develop inspirational friendships at a community group in Nathanael Lessore’s King of Nothing (Hot Key). Writing for younger teenagers, Lessore’s lightness of touch creates a funny, page-turning read that deftly addresses topics such as masculinity and grief. Also shining a light on tough topics was If My Words Had Wings by Danielle Jawando (Simon & Schuster), where a visiting poet provides unexpected inspiration to Tyrell in a young offender’s prison. Jawando’s powerful writing brings compassion and hope to a gritty story.
In challenging times fiction can help readers make sense of the world: 2024 saw a resurgence of interest in dystopian classics from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four to Huxley’s Brave New World, sparked by TikTok memes and political upheaval. This was reflected too in new publishing; playwright Moira Buffini impressed with her rich and immersive debut, Songlight (Faber), set in a near future world where some humans have developed a telepathic sixth sense and are persecuted for it. Buffini’s world building echoes the rigid patriarchy of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, seen, also, in LM Nathan’s compelling and sinister The Virtue Season (Scholastic), in which a romance plays out against the backdrop of a post climate-crisis Britain where bloodlines are strictly controlled using a debutante-style “season”.
Readers yearned for the distraction of cosy romance this year, creating a boom in titles based on favourite tropes such as enemies becoming lovers, fake dating and love triangles. Adiba Jaigirdar, a previous winner of the YA book prize, returned with the smart, Sapphic romance Rani Choudhury Must Die (Hodder), which sees two bitter rivals team up when they are wronged by the same boy. For younger teens, and with a nod to the graphic novel trend created by the Heartstopper phenomenon, Cross My Heart and Never Lie by Nora Dasnes (Farshore), translated from the Norwegian by Matt Bagguley, takes a fresh and heartwarming look at friendship and first crushes, poignantly reflecting the challenges of adolescence.
Finally, in Sarah Crossan’s Where the Heart Should Be (Bloomsbury) the year is 1846 and scullery maid Nell is working at the “big house” as starvation and disease spread through the rural community. She embarks on a seemingly impossible love affair in one of the year’s most memorable novels, atmospheric and resonant, beautifully written in her trademark verse style.