The Brontë Girl by Miriam Halahmy (ZunTold) has been longlisted for the Young Quills 2025 prize for children’s historical fiction. When 15-year-old Kate gets a job at Haworth Parsonage, at first it’s the wages that thrill her. But the bracing wisdom of Charlotte, Emily and Anne give Kate the confidence to become a writer herself. Halahmy brilliantly integrates glimpses of the real-life novelists with the turbulent life of her fictional character. Age 11 up. Sue Klauber’s accomplished wartime adventure, Cobalt (Troika) is also on the longlist.
Silas and his great-grandma have regular video calls and are close buddies but live far apart. One day, they talk about being “between” things – between school grades, between noisy and quiet neighbours, between ordinary days and Shabbat – a clever entry point for understanding the liminal ritual of havdalah. The See-You-Soon Spice Box by Pamela Ehrenberg (Kar-Ben) is a warm-hearted, child-accessible and perceptive story, complemented by Gabby Grant’s digitally-coloured pen-and-ink drawings. Age three up.
Thirteen-year-old Henry Jaffa is the son of a superhero, Orangeman, from the planet Schvitz. Henry, too, has superpowers – but they’re part-time and unpredictable. In Henry Jaffa and the League of Not Really Very Super Heroes, by Paul A Mendelson (Book Guild), Henry and his friend Kali team up with other half-heroes, whose shtick varies from burping out ice-cream to busking like divas, for a royal rescue mission. Prince Derek has been replaced by a robotic double. Can the teens replace him before he ruins a state visit? Light-hearted and zany. Age seven to nine.
David Farr’s The Secret of the Blood-Red Key (Usborne), is the sequel to The Book of Stolen Dreams, in which siblings Rachel and Robert Klein save the book, which confers immortality, from evil leader Charles Malstain with his regime of sudden arrests and labour camps. Now, Rachel must confront another villain and rescue kidnapped Elsa Spiegel from the Hinterland between life and death, with the aid of comical dog, Bobby, and mouse, Titus. Age nine up.
