12 of the Best New Children’s Books Out February 2025

It can sometimes be hard to get kids to engage with poetry, but one of the best ways is to explore poetry as a performance. All Poems Aloud features poems written by former UK Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho, all intended to be read out loud to help children explore rhythm, meter, and how they can use their voices. With poems that range from funny and silly to sweet and thought-provoking, All Poems Aloud is endless fun for budding performance poets.

Like Home is a Wish, The Space Between is a sweet picture book that helps young children work through change. In this tale of empathy and holding space, a grandmother comforts her granddaughter, who is missing her old home, by pointing out how her current situation is similar to the flowers that haven’t quite begun to bloom, and how she can view her in-between situation as a positive.

A great story for kids who are able to read by themselves, Birthday Secret is the third in Sokunbi’s Destiny Ink series. Destiny is excited about her cousin Lola’s birthday party, but feels left out when she gets there and Lola is more interested in playing with her friends. Destiny gets her own gift, a teddy bear who she soon realises can talk — but although she loves playing with the bear, Destiny misses hanging out with her cousin.

This emotional story for middle grade readers follows Rhys, a boy dealing with grief, who finds a lost dog that no one comes forward to claim. Rhys soon forms a strong bond with Worthington, and the two become best friends — but when Rhys has to move to live with his dog-hating, estranged father, he has no idea how he’s going to be able to keep Worthington a secret.

Mizzy, a 12-year-old girl with Down syndrome, dreams of being a detective — but instead, it looks like she has a dull summer ahead of her, with no one around except her older cousins who constantly underestimate her. However, when she finds her late great-aunt’s diaries and realises that she was murdered, Mizzy decides to take the opportunity to launch her own investigation — and find out which of her family members is the killer.

In this fantasy adventure, the god Lugh is released from prison and immediately plunges the world into darkness, causing chaos — but Ella, a young blind girl, is used to navigating without sight. As well as helping her loved ones adapt to the new darkness, Ella forms a plan to challenge Lugh, reverse his actions, and bring back the light. Written by disability campaigner Lucy Edwards, who, like Ella, is blind, this story avoids the ‘disability as superpower’ trope while creating a heroine with agency, and is available in multiple formats, including Braille.

A thoughtful story for younger teens, All the Blues in the Sky deals with grief and unexpected loss. Sage is looking forward to spending her 13th birthday with her best friend, but instead of celebrating, Sage is bereaved following her friend’s death. Struggling to process her loss, Sage joins a support group with other young teens and learns about the different ways that grief can manifest and the many paths beyond mourning.

I’m a big fan of Ravena Guron’s YA thrillers, so I can’t wait to read Mondays are Murder. Seventeen-year-old Kay left her old town behind after her friend’s death, but has to go back to stay with her cousin — and when she arrives in her new bedroom, she finds an anonymous letter on her bed, warning that she will be killed next Monday. Kay has a week to find out who sent the letter, and what’s been going on in her old town, before it’s too late.

This debut thriller is set in the glitzy world of influencers — but of course, there’s a dark side to all the glamour. Harper wants to be a famous influencer and manages to get onto a reality show set on a remote island. As the show begins, Harper and the other influencers have to carry out increasingly sinister tasks to entertain their audience, and it soon becomes clear that the contest is more deadly than Harper could have predicted.