Best children's books - Best Books This Month

It’s easy to feel lost in the flood of so many new children’s books available. Each month, our Review Panel reads scores of new books and we highlight five of our recently published favourites.

This month, our panel of experienced teachers, librarians and children’s book experts has carefully selected five outstanding titles for you to read, with a mixture of fiction and fact, and longer and shorter reads to engage and excite young readers.

Dive into the new year with this fantastic selection of fact and fiction texts for children!

There are two picturebooks for fact-lovers this month. Caryl Hart and Harry Woodgate’s My Small World: Frozen uses vibrant illustrations and rhyming text to take readers on a journey through frozen landscapes populated by polar bears, reindeer, penguins and orcas, while Kate Winter’s The Cave Explorer is described by our reviewer as “a masterclass in how to successfully weave story and history together” and is perfect for adding depth to a Stone Age topic.

Fiction fans also have plenty to choose from in this month’s picks, from a stolen alpaca and an accidental robbery in Emma Green’s The Not-So Great Escape, to lost swimming trunks and country dancing in Phil Earle’s Finn’s Epic Fails, to shapeshifting and wish-granting in Rowan Foxwood’s Magpie Girl.

Read on to discover our Review Panel’s top new children’s books for you to read in January 2026.

Schools can also take advantage of our Books of the Month subscription service, enabling schools to receive regular bundles of our Books of the Month selections.

Finn’s Epic Fails

Phil Earle

Chapter book

There is having a bad day, and then there is Finn’s life. Starting ‘big school’ can be a whole challenge in itself, but Finn seems to be inundated with problems. Embarrassment after embarrassment, failure after failure and mishap after mishap! Finn’s siblings (as well as his divorced parents) are not too far away from the root of all his problems.

Finn’s Fails include losing his swimming trunks in a school swimming lesson, his brother pinning him to the floor and all whilst filming, country dancing in PE and his dad’s daily cycling outfits! Luckily for Finn, he has some knights in shining armour in the form of his best mates. There is also a surprise to enter his life, and it was exactly what he needed in so many ways – with some wins for Finns finally starting to appear.

Through Finn’s first-hand account, the author captures the vulnerability and anxieties of secondary transition (where everything, from the uncomfortable uniform to whether or not to play up for a supply teacher, can feel mortifying one way or another…) with a huge dose of humour and heart.

What another superb book from Phil Earle. A light-hearted and hilarious book that would gain the attention of children in upper KS2 and lower KS3, with a particular appeal to boys, reluctant readers or lovers of funny, diary-style stories.

The Not-So Great Escape

Emma Green

Chapter book

12 year old Hedley likes life to be safe and predictable, especially as his own changed completely after the car crash a year ago.

As part of his therapy, he attends Bridlebank Activities Centre every weekend, where the thuggish Aiden takes delight in tormenting him. Things get worse when their support worker, Nic, insists that they both start a weekend job at Farmer Bert’s Petting Zoo. However, Aiden steals the farmer’s prize alpaca, Duke, hiding it at the activity centre, and convinces Hedley to embark on a quest to take Duke to a release site so that he can live free in the wild.

As you’d expect, disasters ensue, including wrecking a petrol station store, accidentally assisting in a robbery, causing a football match to be abandoned, and – of course – all their exploits going viral. With the latter, it will be an interesting lesson for readers to see how much the true course of events in the story differs from the online reports.

There are themes of family, friendship, grief, courage and stepping outside your comfort zone. It is written in the first person, giving a real insight into Hedley’s character and plenty of opportunities for wonderful one-liners to voice his thoughts. This is writing at its best, with genuine laugh-out-loud moments (especially in the police station and the football stadium) and a well-crafted and emotional ending – a totally unforeseen one for me!

I would highly recommend this for any fans of Jenny Pearson or anyone who enjoys fast-paced comedic adventures. It has been one of my favourite books this year.

My Small World: Frozen

Caryl Hart & Harry Woodgate

Non-fiction, Picturebook

This is a fantastic text for any EYFS classroom. It is the perfect text to spark the imagination of children, or could be used as a tool to provide teachers ideas for planning and continuous provision.

The book takes learners on a journey through a frozen small world, describing the landscapes and animals that can be found there. It captures the heart of small world play while teaching facts about habitats, weather, animals and places. Through simple, rhyming text, the book takes readers on a journey through frozen landscapes, where they will encounter glaciers, igloos, the Northern Lights, polar bears in caves, orcas in the ocean and penguins at the South Pole.

This picturebook would be an excellent introduction to a frozen worlds topic or a tool to extend and promote vocabulary. At the end of the text, there is a double-page spread of ideas and instructions for how to make your own frozen small world. Simple but effective, and a great guide for parents to offer some guidance on how to support at home.

Magpie Girl

Rowan Foxwood

Chapter book

When she was eight, Lavender Wild went missing in the woods for months. Although her memories are hazy, she knows she was rescued and looked after by Mother Nest – a deity who can transform between an old woman and a giant magpie.

Back home, Lavender has become a Magpie Girl with the ability to find lost things and communicate with birds, whilst also growing feathers – which she hides or plucks out. She still longs for adventure, but her father keeps her close, terrified of another disappearance.

When the father of her childhood best friend, Kit Noble, vanishes during his annual quest to offer tribute to a deity, Lavender is desperate to be involved in the rescue attempt. She runs away and joins Kit on his mission, but they are thwarted by earthquakes, daemons and the presence of the powerful wish-granting Firebird from his mountaintop prison. Lavender realises that Kit’s family history is deeply entwined with local legends and deities and that there is far more at stake than just using her magpie senses to find Lord Noble.

This fabulous adventure gives a little nod at the beginning to Rowan’s previous book, Heartseer, although this is a standalone story. The characters are well-formed and the changes in their relationships are carefully constructed, with a thread running through the story regarding discussing problems and painful memories instead of ignoring them. I loved all the different deities and the author notes at the end, which explained the mythological basis for their characters: my favourite has to be the Nightmare with the ability to take others to visit sleepers in their dreams and affect their future.

I have thoroughly enjoyed both of the author’s books and would recommend her to fans of Sophie Anderson and those who enjoy myths and folklore

The Cave Explorer

Kate Winter

Picturebook

The creator of The Fossil Hunter has struck gold again with this fantastically illustrated narrative non-fiction picture book. It tells the story of Marcel Ravidat and his dog, who discovered the Lascaux cave paintings.

The book is a masterclass in how to successfully weave story and history together – the pages are full of a mixture of narrative and timelines, glossaries and annotated images – all topped off with incredible artwork that leaves just the right amount to the imagination. In this, it reflects the brilliant way in which Winter describes the work of all those who have studied and hypothesised about the art in the Lascaux caves, having to use imagination to infer and fill the gap between what is discovered and what can only be guessed at.

The intrigue and mystery surrounding the cave paintings feels touchable in this book – children will feel like they’ve had an experience and discovered something for themselves (a high point in the book is one of the fold-out surprise spreads illustrating the moment when Marcel lights a match and he and his friends see the cave paintings for the very first time) – which is what the very best science based picture books are all about!

This is an essential classroom addition when teaching about prehistory and the Stone Age!