CHILDREN can easily get bored on holiday. Best to prepare well and make sure they have some beautifully designed, captivating non-fiction, as well as brain-stretching science fiction.
This year, watery worlds are very much to the fore. Maggie Li’s board books are delightful first science offerings for babies, with bright colours, dynamic images and growing room built into their sparse language so preschoolers will get progressively more from them as they revisit. In , for example, circular cutouts entice little fingers as a single egg transforms into a frog, avoiding the perils that wipe out the other frogspawn before the life cycle starts again.
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For readers aged 5 and over, the inspiring writer Nicola Davies teams up with illustrator Catherine Rayner in . Rayner’s snowy images invoke an Antarctic chill nicely, while Davies’s rich, stately text describes the breeding cycle of the emperor penguin – and the dangers and disruption facing this species as the sea ice melts.
Readers aged 7-plus who enjoy a frisson of sub-aquatic fear will want to plunge headlong into , an Usborne Extreme Planet lift-the-flap book by Laura Cowan, illustrated by Qu Lan, that bristles with the bizarre and the luminously grotesque. From the twilight zone several hundred metres down to the deepest place on Earth, children will find barreleye fish with see-through heads, parasol sponges described by Cowan as “evil fairies” and bloody-belly comb jellies that “eat everything they can swallow”.
For teenagers, The Girl Who Broke the Sea by A. Connors is an ominous, evocative science-fiction thriller set in a deep-sea mining base on the ocean floor, featuring a girl with a chequered past who becomes confined to a high-pressure environment.
Conservation and climate remain popular in non-fiction for all ages. A stand-out title from last year aimed at readers aged 8 and over is . This presents a vision of the future in which every aspect of human life has been overhauled in the interests of building a better planet. Dealing squarely with the catastrophic realities of climate change, it is infused with a sense of hope and excitement, celebrating climate activism and scientific endeavour via Bethany Lord’s soaring illustrations.
by Lan Cook and Andy Prentice is geared for readers aged 10 and over, conveying appropriately sophisticated concepts – like the difference between biomes and ecosystems, or positive and negative feedback loops – all told in straightforward language and humorous speech bubbles. While it unflinchingly lays out the realities of global warming, its factual calm leaves the reader informed, with a sense of possibility rather than panic.
Plenty of compelling children’s non-fiction looks inward instead, at the wonders of the human body. Rachel Greener and Clare Owen’s inclusive, simple and candid presents a reassuring overview of puberty for the over-6s, covering physical changes and shifting identity in a way that will help adults worried about finding the right words.
There is further anatomical exploration for those aged 7-plus in , perhaps the best contemporary writer of children’s non-fiction. Dawn Cooper’s luminously colourful illustrations and Thomas’s lively, thought-provoking phrases (“fat is like bubble wrap for your body”) make for an absorbing, original account of bodily systems and processes.
In the same vein, for older children and teenagers, Ben Martynoga’s Explodapedia series, illustrated by Moose Allain, kicks off with and – accessible, entertaining and focused on the history of science, as well as cutting-edge discoveries.
The augmented body is the subject of by Patrick Kane, illustrated by Samuel Rodriguez. It is an intricate exploration of medical engineering for those aged 7 and over, investigating the ever-developing relationships between humans and technology, from cochlear implants to bionic limbs.
Finally, for older teens, the dark potential of virtual reality is explored in by Triona Campbell. It is a thriller in which Asha, a gifted hacker who discovers her beloved sister Maya dead, decides to infiltrate her sibling’s former employer to expose the frightening secrets of the VR game she blames for Maya’s death.
All in all, there is plenty to enjoy and to brighten dull days.
Imogen Russell Williams is a writer and critic based in London
