Age 4–11: Hottest New Titles for Spring 2025

Bring an irresistible bookshop vibe to your school library with our Hottest New Titles for Spring 2025. This carefully curated selection is as captivating as an enticing window display, guaranteed to draw pupils in. These books are also perfect for keeping your classroom libraries relevant and exciting, with two hand-picked titles for each year group and an outstanding poetry book for each key stage. 

Books for Reception:

10 Dogs: A Funny Furry Counting Book by Emily Gravett

Ten gorgeous dogs chase, hide and play with ten juicy sausages in this funny counting book by the multi-award-winning, bestselling Emily Gravett. Bursting with energy and fun, young children will love to count the dogs and the sausages, as well as looking out for all the funny details on each page. The book explores numbers from one going up to ten, and ten going down to zero, touching on several simple concepts like half, all, more and less along the way.

Moggie McFlea: The Witch’s Cat by Anna Kemp

When Magic Magda takes in villainous Moggie McFlea, things do not go well as Moggie tinkers with Magda’s every spell, resulting in cream in every fountain and a tabby on TV. Mags is in despair! But even Moggie McFlea doesn’t want to make poor Magda cry, so will they find a way to get the most out of being both naughty and nice? Discover tricks and treats galore in this funny and affectionate story from the bestselling author of Dogs Don't Do Ballet, with irresistibly spiky illustrations from Adam Beer.

Books for Year 1:

King Lion by Emma Yarlett

A delightful, funny story about making friends and learning to communicate from award-winning and bestselling author–illustrator, Emma Yarlett. The lion is King and everyone in his kingdom is happy. Everyone, that is, except King Lion himself. The king feels lonely and decides he needs a friend. He tries everything: roaring “hello”, waving his paws, flashing a smile and even cracking a joke. But everyone just runs away. Then, feeling lonelier than ever, the king climbs up the tallest tower in his kingdom and roars and roars and ROARS! Now no one in the kingdom is happy. Until a little girl sees the king and comes up with a very brave plan to help him. A joyful, touching and vibrantly illustrated story. 

The Wild by Yuval Zommer

Once upon a time, somewhere not far away, was the Wild. The Wild was huge and giving, and everything from insects, to birds, to humans made their home in it. At first, people lived lightly and took what they needed, but when they started to take more, the Wild suffered. For the Wild to be healthy, someone must be brave enough to raise their voice . . .

Yuval Zommer's lyrical modern fable has a hopeful and powerful message about how our environment needs us just as much as we need it.

Books for Year 2:

Gina Kaminski Saves the Wolf by Gina Kaminski

This popular, twisty fairy tale featuring an autistic heroine is now available in paperback — and it’s definitely one you want on your bookshelf! Gina Kaminski is here to share three facts: 1. Little Red Riding Hood is full of BIG mistakes. 2. She’s heading to fairy tale land to fix them. 3.  She WILL save the wolf. Gina is a vivid and appealing character whose unique perspective on the world and use of emojis to express her feelings proudly celebrates neurodiversity.

A Sea of Stories by Sylvia Bishop

A range of simple stories, with beautiful colour illustrations. Whenever Roo visits Grandpa, she loves exploring the seaside cove near his cottage. But on her latest stay, Grandpa explains that he can’t go down there any more — the path is too steep and overgrown for him to manage. Instead, Grandpa tells Roo the stories behind the many objects that fill his house. All of Grandpa’s stories feature the cove and Roo realises that now, even though they’re so close to the sea, Grandpa is cut off from it. She wonders how she can bring Grandpa back to the place he loves the most.

Books for Year 3:

The Hotel Balzaar by Kate DiCamillo

Kate DiCamillo is a double Newbery Medal winning author, and this superb short book for younger readers is written with the same care and exquisite use of language as her longer novels. The Hotel Balzaar draws on fairy-tale themes and presents a variety of magical stories, like a trail of clues, within a larger story. The overarching story of the daughter of a maid living in poverty in an extravagant hotel, waiting for her father to return from a war, is reminiscent of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic A Little Princess. It is a beautiful and comforting exploration of loss, the tragedy of war, love, and reunion that uses repeated patterns of language and rhythms to bewitch the reader. It is extraordinarily rich and satisfying to read and would make an excellent class text.

The Incredible Adventures of Gaston le Dog by Michael Rosen

Gaston le Dog longs to return to the beautiful beach he remembers from years ago. So, he sets off on an adventure — but mystery and danger lurk at every turn, and Gaston will need all the help he can get from the friends he meets along the way. But can they all be trusted? And will Gaston’s odyssey bring him everything he hoped for? This playful new tale from national treasure Michael Rosen sprinkles myth, magic and fairy tale to create a brilliant story, illustrated by award-winning artist Viviane Schwarz, perfect for fans of the Grimwood series.

Books for Year 4:

The Night Bigfoot Stole my Pants by Tom Mclaughlin

A monster has broken into Jack's garden and stolen his favourite yellow underpants. The cheek! Jack sees his chance to flex his new fairy skills and embark on his first ever solo mission. Unfortunately, in chasing the creature across town and leaving a trail of chaos in his wake, Jack breaks every rule in the fairy rule book (you must keep the magical kingdom a secret from humans, no one can know you are really a fairy, and you must NEVER EVER cause a lorry to crash into a take-out restaurant shop, creating a ketchup spillage across the high street whilst in pursuit of a magical creature who has your pants). Read this book to find out if Jack gets his wand back, tracks down the monster, and makes everything right again before he's kicked out of the magical kingdom for good!

Oscar's Lion by Adam Baron

This outstanding book about a boy who wakes up to discover that his parents have left him in the care of a hungry lion is destined to become a modern classic. Captivating from page one, it unfolds some sensitive themes, including grief, the loneliness of children with busy parents, social exclusion, and wartime, in an entertaining and subtle way. Beautiful and enjoyable in equal measure, this thoughtful book is the perfect class read, especially when paired with the topic of remembrance.

Books for Year 5:

The Beanstalk Murder by P.G. Bell

Trainee meadow witch Anwen is having a bad day — which gets much worse when a dead giant falls from the sky and destroys her village. But when she examines the body, she discovers something interesting. This giant was murdered, which means a killer is on the loose! Tasked with sending a message to the giant kingdom via beanstalk, Anwen and her nemesis, trainee sorceress Cerys, accidentally find themselves whipped up into the sky and deposited in the giants' royal palace — where the king is missing. Using their perfect spy-size and witchy skills, the girls must track down his killer. But how can you investigate a murder mystery when you risk being stepped on by your suspects?

Maisie vs Antarctica by Jack Jackman

Filled with humour, heart and a touch of the supernatural this first book in a brilliant new series takes you on a non-stop adventure in Antarctica, perfect for the most intrepid of readers! Maisie thinks her dad is the most boring person in the world. For fun he likes to do origami (but only basic triangles) or jigsaw puzzles of a cloudless sky (yes, every piece is blue). He writes cool-sounding books like How to Wrestle a Crocodile and How to Defuse a Bomb, but he's never actually done any of the awesome things he writes about.

But Maisie has to admit, weird things happen around Dad. Unexplainable things...Maisie is determined to find out the truth about her dad. What she doesn't realise is that she'll discover some things about herself and what it really means to be a hero along the way. One thing is for sure — it's going to be the adventure of a lifetime!

Books for Year 6:

Shipwrecked by Jenny Pearson

Three children face shipwrecks, survival and pirates in the latest adventure from bestselling and award-winning author Jenny Pearson. Sebastian Sunrise and his two best friends, Lina and Étienne, are in a bit of trouble. They are stranded on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, after a rowing race went very, very wrong. The friends have no idea how long they might have to stay on the island, so they make a plan. They will try to survive, look after the island's baby turtles, and have fun, if they can. But Sebastian's life has never gone to plan, and they quickly face jellyfish stings, burnt bums and an out-of-control goat. And when a boat arrives, bringing pirates who want to hunt the island's baby turtles, the friends face their greatest danger yet...

The Worlds We Leave Behind by A.F. Harrold

This beautiful, powerful, dramatic, and gripping short read, with stunning Carnegie-shortlisted illustrations, is breathtakingly good! The writing is poetic, timeless, and powerfully evocative of childhood. The story is layered and elegantly simple, with a sense of real depth. It thoughtfully explores why we do what we do and how much of our lives are dictated by circumstance. It is packed with beautifully written scenes of a small group of children in their summer holidays, an earthy mix of joy, sadness, exhilaration, loneliness, camaraderie, and conflict. These experiences and relationships turn and shift as a witch snips children out of the world, as if they had never been there, and the world adjusts. She can only take a victim if another child wishes to seek revenge on them. The witch is very persuasive and convinces angry, hurt children that it will not harm anyone to remake the world without their enemy. Only they will remember the missing child, and all they need to do is crush a magic acorn. Friendships, families, and personalities shift, divide, and reform in unpredictable ways each time an acorn is crushed, and the tension is palpable. The world reforms one last time when a boy with an unhappy home life foils the witch, and the story ends with him opening his front door and stepping into the unknown.

Poetry for KS1:

Water Songs by Mandy Ross

“Water for life! That’s what we need!” A true cascade of poems. Following on from the success of Tree Whispers, Mandy Ross has turned her attention to the diverse voices of water. Beautifully illustrated by Sam Rudd, this is her collection of its haunting and lyrical songs. Our relationship with water is celebrated in its many forms — playful, industrious, productive, life-giving — and many more. With a strong environmental message, this book will be a source of fascination and inspiration for young readers.

Poetry for KS2:

Let Sleeping Cats Lie — Pet Poems by Brian Bilston

A hilarious collection of pet poems by wordplay wizard Brian Bilston. When you've got a bad case of the 'mews' and are in desperate need of a 'pup'-lifting read, this book is the 'ulti-mutt' remedy. Stars include Wilf, the hypnotist Labracadabrador, a philosophically inclined goldfish penning a profound haiku, a hen named Barbara receiving an adoring tribute, and an 'octopussy' cat that seems to have all its paws in plenty of odd little pies.