Within relatively few words, alongside elegantly flowing and expressive illustrations by Karen George, the Catchpoles convey a complex topic with a dexterous lightness of tone and clarity. Please do share comments from your readers with us to ensure we do get the books that our students will be most excited to find on the final long list.

You can share these with us at the Hive Mind meeting in January or share them with us in advance so we can include them on the information spreadsheet that we share with participating schools. As the earlier timeline catches up with the later one, you’ll feel all the emotions of a woman caught up in a terrible war.When Eleanor and her slovenly coworker Raymond help an elderly gentleman after a fall, the three become friends, and Eleanor learns that opening up isn’t always a bad thing. Steve Anthony has created a story that has no forced message about disability; instead he uses Zibbo the dragon to reflect acceptance and inclusion (Zibbo is very different to the children in every way, but they love and accept him regardless). Mbue brilliantly paints a fascinating look at immigrant life – the struggles with the immigration system, the desire for a better life, the balancing of cultural differences and the financial burden that comes with being poor in America. Sometimes authors knock it out of the park with their debut novel, and neuroscientist Lisa Genova certainly fits that description. All about reclaiming your life through powerful choices, McKeown will make you realize it’s not about having more time, it’s about doing the right things with the time you have.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. With a lovely, gentle message about celebrating our differences and all the different things we are good at, Amazing is the perfect book to start a conversation about understanding and diversity with little ones.Sixteen souls was a clear winner but Finn Longman’s The Butterfly Assassin and Alex Bell’s The Lighthouse were a super close Silver and Bronze. Truman Capote was the founder of narrative nonfiction with his thrilling look at an unspeakable crime. A classic for a reason, this novel is surprisingly short, leaving you plenty to read even more five-star books. There were so many wonderful and exiting titles to choose from this year and try as we might we just couldn’t get it down to just 15 books. Follow this link to our new fancy-pants subscription form: ABA 2021 Or if you’re feeling even more fancy you can follow the quick code on the shoutout you should have received in the post last week.

The Jack of the illustrations are utterly convincing, a testimony to the fact that the illustrator worked so closely with the ‘real’ Jack (who happens to be on the autistic spectrum).He is an Ambassador for The National Literacy Trust , an active supporter of Beanstalk and a vocal advocate for more incidental inclusiveness in children's literature, having written several articles on the subject. However, I would include The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and also Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides as well as The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker.