BOOKS


Twelve-year-old Charley is set to make it big as a singer, and her best friend George as a comedian, when they find their names in the papers for a very different reason—as international art thieves. Début from comedian Adam Hills, of Channel 4’s “The Last Leg”.


Category Spotlight The Disability Issue


grows into an enormous pumpkin, Marty’s life changes forever. Caryl Lewis is an award-winning established author, who writes in English and in Welsh, for children and adults.


Cerrie Burnell; Lucy Fleming (illus) Unicorn Seekers: The Map of Lost Unicorns Scholastic, 3rd March, £6.99, pb, 9780702306969 When Elodie Lightfoot starts to see unicorns everywhere she goes, she begins to understand that unicorns are around us all the time, but unseen, hidden to all but Unicorn Seekers like herself while their magic is forgotten. One of two brilliant books by Burnell out this year.


Cerrie Burnell Wilder than Midnight Puffin, 5th May, £7.99, pb, 9780241457160 A girl raised by wolves and a girl trapped in a high tower come together to change the future of the fairytale land of Silverthorne, to unlock the doors and untangle the briars. Like Burnell herself, the main protagonist has a limb difference.


Stephanie Burgis The Raven Throne Bloomsbury, August 2022, pb, £7.99, 9781526614469 Cordelia is one of triplets born to a duchess, who is also a witch. The triplets have magic of their own—Cordelia is a shapeshifter—but they only really discover how powerful it is when they are under threat. A second book in the series, following 2021’s The Raven Heir.


Caryl Lewis Seed Macmillan Children’s, 12th May, £7.99, pb, 9781529077667 Marty’s lifeline is the community garden his Grandad tends. When Grandad gives Marty a magic seed and it


34 24th September 2021


Chrissie Sains & Cara Mailey I Got This Scholastic, 14th April, £6.99, pb, 9780702314988 Starting secondary school throws up some challenges for Erin, but also opportunities. When a competition launches to be in a pop video, Erin knows the winner has to be her. Co-written by Sains and pre-teen Mailey, who has achondroplasia, this is a great, heartwarm- ing own-voices story.


Justyn Edwards The Great Fox Illusion Walker Books, 7th April, £6.99, pb, 9781529501940 Teen-magician Flick Lions has the chance to compete to win the legacy of famous magician The Great Fox. But the real prize she has her eye on is justice for her family. Flick is an amputee and wears a prosthetic leg. Début from Edwards, and the beginning of a promising new series.


and her own diagnosis of autism in adulthood.


Robin Stevens & Serena Patel (eds); Harry Woodgate (illus) The Very Merry Crime Club Farshore, 28th October, £12.99, hb, 9780755503681 What could be more festive than a beautiful illustrated hardback collection of new seasonal mysteries from some of the best crime writers for young readers? Featuring 13 new stories from authors including Abiola Bello, Elle McNicoll, Dominique Valente, Maisie Chan, Nizrana Farook, Patrice Lawrence, Roopa Farooki, Serena Patel and Sharna Jackson.


Aoife Dooley Frankie’s World Scholastic, 6th January, £8.99, pb, 9780702307355 Twelve-year-old Frankie sometimes feels like she lives in a parallel world to everyone else. She’s different, but she doesn’t know why. Maybe if she finds her dad, it will explain everything. This quirky, funny graphic novel gives a fantastic own-voices perspective on growing up with autism.


Children’s non-fiction


Timothée de Fombelle; Sarah Ardizzone (trans) Saving Celeste Walker Books, 4th November, £6.99, pb, 9781406397192 Celeste is dying, sick from pollution just like the world she lives in. One boy and his friend has the chance to save her, and maybe the planet too. “Cli-fi” for children, this is a moving and gripping tale of a possible future.


Kate Foster Paws Walker Books, 4th August, £6.99, pb, 9781406399240 Eleven-year old Alex and his cockapoo Kevin (age unspecified) negotiate the unsettling changes involved in moving up to Big School together. Based on Foster’s experience of a dog helping her autistic son,


Danielle Jata-Hall & Harry Thompson; Mollie Sherwin (illus) I’m Not Upside Down, I’m Downside Up: Not a Boring Book About PDA Jessica Kingsley, 21st April, £10.99, pb, 9781839971174 Designed to help children understand and manage Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). Although a controversial diagnosis among the autistic community, and not recognised by all clinicians, PDA is increasingly used to describe an overwhelming need to avoid or resist demands. This book seeks to demystify for those who have a diagnosis.


Camilla Pang Perfectly Weird, Perfectly You: A Scientific Guide To Growing Up Wren and Rook, 17th March £8.99, pb, 9781526364326 When Camilla Pang was diagnosed as autistic aged eight, science became her translator. She could understand things through science


that she couldn’t otherwise. Now a scientist and award-winning author, this is her survival guide through science, urging readers to embrace weirdness—it’s what makes you you.


not understood as such in the alternative fantasy historical Scotland of Scotia.


Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara; Queenbe Monyei (illus) Amanda Gorman Frances Lincoln, 1st February, £9.99, hb, 9780711270695 Little People, Big Dreams biography of the poet Amanda Gorman, who shot to international fame in 2021 as she was chosen to read at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration. As a child Gorman was an avid reader, but between an auditory processing disorder and a speech impediment, she found talking in public difficult. Poetry helped her find her voice.


YA


Kelis Rowe Finding Jupiter Walker Books, 2nd June, £7.99, pb, 9781529500639 Ray is into roller-derby, found poetry and not boys. Orion is a hopeless romantic pretending to be a jock. A kind of “Romeo and Juliet”, but set in Memphis in 2022, Rowe says she aimed “to give Black teens a love to root for that was joyful”, but doesn’t shirk away from loss and grief.


the reality of managing a stoma bag. Judge Kim Moore called the poems “unfailingly precise” and “wildly imaginative”.


Karl Knights Kin Smith Doorstop, 1st June, £5, pb, 9781914914287 Début pamphlet from freelance journalist Knights, who writes eloquently about life as a young, queer autistic person with cerebral palsy under austerity. A winner of the 2021 New Poets Prize, judge Kim Moore commented on their “wry humour and anger”. Moving, sharp poems that do not shy away from hard truths.


Siobhan Curham Dreaming by Starlight Walker Books, 3rd March, £6.99, pb, 9781529504019 When you’ve grown up surfing in Sydney, Brighton doesn’t seem so exciting. Jazz is finding it hard to adjust until her cousin tells her about the Moonlight Dreamers, a secret society she formed, and encourages her to do the same. Third in this series about friendship and following your dreams.


Marta Pacini


The (Un)lawful Killing of Daniel Brown Disturbance Press, 17th February, £8, pb, 9781916871304 Marcus knows that Police Sergeant Talbot Blair shot his father in a racially motivated attack, but Blair has been cleared of all blame. This is the story of Marcus’ quest for justice. This is the first YA novel from Pacini, who lives with multiple chronic illnesses.


Joseph Elliott The Burning Swift Walker Books, 6th January, £7.99, pb, 9781406385885 In this concluding part of the Shadow Skye trilogy, a deadly army is approaching from the South, and Jaime and Agatha must risk their lives to save their world. Agatha has Down’s Syndrome, though it is


Finn Longman The Butterfly Assassin Simon & Schuster, 26th May 2022, £7.99, pb, 9781398507340 Being a teenage girl is hard enough; what if you are also a trained assassin? When Isabel blows her cover by murdering a burglar, can she escape the attention of the guilds that control the city? Longman is a queer disabled writer and medievalist. This is their first novel.


Poetry


Hannah Hodgson Queen of Hearts Smith Doorstop, 1st June, £5, pb, 9781338630749 A winner of the 2021 New Poets Prize, this is Hodgson’s third pamphlet, exploring life-limiting illness in all its peculiarity, surreality and particular mundanity, from the isolation of shielding during the pandemic to


Jane Burn Be Feared Nine Arches, 11th November, £9.99, pb, 9781913437275 Much-anticipated début collection from this highly original poet and artist. Burn has a distinctive voice and perspective on survival, sisterhood, self and sexuality, on working- class womanhood and


Sarah Barnsley The Thoughts Smith Doorstop, 1st January, £10.95, pb, 9781914914027 This formally innovative début collection explores living with intrusive thoughts as a facet of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), balancing the debilitating aspects of mental illness with small joys, falling in love, and all the matter of a life. Penny Boxall writes: “Her voice is wry, considered and convincing”.


Helen Seymour The Underlook Smith Doorstop, 1st January, £10.95, pb, 9781914914003 In turns funny, surreal and illuminating, this début collection, from an award- winning writer for stage and page, articulates a life lived under the bed, at the bottom of a well, in the glances exchanged between doctors. It’s informed by her experi- ences of disability, surgery and medical trauma.

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