A beautiful, meditative bedtime book about a lion who can’t sleep—until a friend offers sage advice. From Kate Greenaway Medal-winning author-illustrator Catherine Rayner.

Authors Live Catherine Rayner - BBC Authors Live Catherine Rayner - BBC

Hitchhikers are a rare breed nowadays so the context for The Ride (Tate) by Brazilian author-illustrator Guilherme Karsten could need some explaining to kids. But the ragtag bunch of misfits trying to get a lift down to the beach with a surfer might be familiar, from the red-caped girl escaping a wolf to the retired superhero pulling a wheelie case. While some of the rhyming doesn’t trip off the tongue as easily as you’d like, this book is such a riot – full of eye-popping pictures the colour of ketchup and hazy sunshine – that it’s a joy to be along for the ride. Clean Up!, by Nathan Bryon and Dapo Adeola, ‘captures the fizzing energy of young children’. Illustration: Dapo Adeola