Reading For Pleasure: Books We Love This Month

Best Books This Month – October 2026

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 longer and shorter reads to engage and excite young readers.

With the evenings drawing in, it’s the perfect time to start a new book series, and there are three here to choose from. Bad Guys author Aaron Blabey’s Game of Pets is an imaginative tale of planetary peril that will never let you look at your pet in the same way again. And there are two series with a spooky theme that’s perfect for Halloween: Dotty Sutton’s hilarious, highly illustrated Moth the Veggie Vampire, and Phil Corbett’s high-energy graphic novel, Ghost and Toast.

For younger readers, The Bat Who Didn’t Like the Dark is a wonderfully illustrated picturebook by Steve Small, which follows a bat whose friends help him to overcome his fear.

For those looking for a non-fiction read, Blood, Guts and Nasty Cuts is a grisly and gory history of medicine, spanning from the ancient world to the present day, and even into the future.

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

Blood, Guts, and Nasty Cuts

Dr Alanna Skuse

Non-fiction

We love this glorious, high-interest non-fiction choice! Blood, Guts, and Nasty Cuts explores the history of medicine through the lens of the grisly, the gore-soaked and the cleverly inventive. Spanning from the ancient world to modern times (and even a glimpse into the future), readers in Upper KS2 will enjoy building on their knowledge from history units like Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and World War Two, whilst being treated to a host of eye-popping new facts.

Formatted in classic DK style, each double-page spread focuses on a different subtopic and shares information via accessible bite-sized paragraphs, visual timelines, colour illustrations, diagrams and photographs. A helpful glossary and index are also included. Stylised with blood splatters and an explicit focus on the weird and wonderful, the ‘gruesome’ framing serves as a high-interest gateway into what actually turns out to be a hugely informative and comprehensive overview of medical history for children.

The book is written by public historian Dr Alanna Skuse, known for work on health, medicine and the body in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The text balances the gross-out humour many children will come looking for with genuinely interesting scientific and historical context. Readers flick between topics on the earliest recorded surgeries, the evolution of prosthetics, wacky cures, germs, food used as medicine, blood transfusions and medical technology.

I expect many readers, like me, will enjoy most the fascinating sections on Medieval maladies, plague, and pestilence (bound to capture fans of Horrible Histories), while later chapters cover wartime wound treatment, modern medical innovations and the future of medicine, including AI and robot surgeons.

As Dr Skuse notes in her engaging introduction, medics through time simply did their best with the knowledge they had – leading to bizarre healing attempts like hanging toads around necks, doctors diagnosing by tasting patient urine and trepanning (making holes in skulls to let headaches out!). Ultimately, though, history’s trials and errors have paved the way for life-saving breakthroughs like vaccines, antibiotics and anaesthetics. And, as the section on the future of medicine encourages, we’re by no means finished!

This is the kind of non-fiction book that KS2 classrooms will want to invest in, as children will certainly pick it up to dip into time and time again.

Ghost and Toast

Phil Corbett

Graphic novel

Ghost and Toast is a new high-energy graphic novel series by Phil Corbett (known for Kitty Quest), and is packed with bright illustrations and laugh-out-loud randomness! The first book, Slice to Meet You, feels sure to bring a fresh injection of fun to the Key Stage 2 graphic novel shelf.

The story centres on a delightfully unlikely duo: a ghost who can’t remember his past life (the dead one) and – because why not – a talking slice of toast (the bread one). Newly acquainted, the duo sets out on a wacky wild goose chase to uncover the ghost’s lost past.

Across three connected stories in this first volume (Ghost Arrives, Train Trip and Home Sweet Home), the friends bounce from one bonkers spooky-but-not-quite-scary situation to the next. The plot loosely orbits around their quest to find out about Ghost’s past, but the real fun lies in the sheer chaos of the distractions along the way, featuring everything from haunted ghost trains and a surreal portal-filled mansion owned by the mysterious Mr Borloff, to giant kitties, a Hansel and Gretel-style gingerbread cottage and a battalion of evil baked goods (what is the collective noun for croissants with attitude, by the way?!).

Fans of Phil Corbett’s other books will instantly recognise the bright, thick-lined illustrations of expressive characters that match the high-energy, fast-paced narrative. Children will love the relentless barrage of punny humour, meta-jokes and cheeky nods to popular graphic novel favourites like Bunny vs Monkey. As a bonus, there is a step-by-step drawing tutorial at the back.

By the end of this first story, the main mystery remains unsolved, but readers don’t mind at all. The book’s joy is entirely in the random, unpredictable ride. I anticipate this ‘spooktacular’ graphic novel will fly off the library shelves. In the words of one of its cover quotes – it’s the best thing since sliced bread.

Best Books This Month – September 2026

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.

There are brand new adventures set in familiar worlds, as Katie and Kevin Tsang’s The Neverland Thieves revists the magical realm of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan, while Jack Meggitt-Phillips’s The Potion of Doom features a descendent of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll.

There’s a new detective series in Harry Woodgate’s Cinnamon Crumb, a baking-inspired crime-solving caper set in the town of Marzipan. For lovers of graphic novels, Cat School: Odd Cat Out is the first in an inclusive and relatable new trilogy, and a positive read for children who are starting school.

Big changes also feature in Mama’s Wedding, a gentle picturebook about blended families and remarriage, and one child’s path to understanding where she belongs.

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

Mama’s Wedding

Circle Yuen

Picturebook

Told with real tenderness, this picturebook about remarriage and blended families captures a key moment in a young child’s life. When Ruby and her little sister, Cindy, are asked to be flower girls at Mama’s wedding, Ruby faces big, conflicting feelings about where she belongs as her family dynamic shifts. With gentle support from Granny, her dad Daniel and Mama’s new husband Alex, Ruby comes to see that love doesn’t have to disappear when life moves on; it simply changes and blossoms differently.

This is a beautiful, steady and encouraging story that allows space to validate complex emotions without easy answers. The narrative offers an empathetic look at the quiet courage children need when navigating major transitions or facing new things, and this theme will resonate with many young readers whatever their family setup. There is much solace and comfort to be found in the pages of this beautifully reassuring tale.

The artwork carries a similar warmth, using soft pastel yellows, blues and purples that evoke spring blossoms. These warm and gentle tones merge with a sense of happy celebration, reflecting the hope of new beginnings alongside the safety of family love. We see this also in the recurring symbol of a yellow paper flower that bonds the newly blended family, teaching us that “Love can bloom in different ways.”

A wonderful prompt for discussions around blended families, remarriage and celebrations, Mama’s Wedding is a superb addition to any primary bookshelf.

The Bat Who Didn’t Like the Dark

Steve Small

Picturebook

This picture book follows a little bat who is afraid of the dark. They keep their fear bottled up inside because bats are supposed to like the dark. One day, they get stuck in the dark, where they meet an owl. The owl understands the bat is scared and helps him find his way home, meeting other nocturnal animals along the way. By the end of the story, the little bat has over come his fear with the help of his friends.

This would be a brilliant book for teaching children how to talk about things they are scared of and how our friends can help us with a problem. It would also link with a science topic about nocturnal animals. The illustrations and use of the light and dark contrasts are wonderful.

Best Books This Month – August 2026

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’s list features plenty of options to read on holiday, including picturebook Beacons of Light, which is a must for beach-bound fact fans with its gorgeously illustrated history of the most fascinating of coastal landmarks, the lighthouse.

Two more picturebooks also feature in this summer holiday reading list: Worm’s Big Dig, which combines humour and facts in an engaging underground adventure; and The Beautiful Layers of Me, a heartwarming story about self acceptance and cultural identity.

For older readers, August’s Books of the Month include two highly recommended chapter books: Into Thin Air, S. E. Durrant’s mystery novel with diverse characters and themes of family and the environment; and The Horse Dreamer, a magically illustrated story by Holly Surplice that balances the heaviness of grief with the power of imagination and friendship.

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

Game of Pets: The Boy Who Knew Too Much

Aaron Blabey

Graphic novel

This humorous, illustrated book, written by Bad Guys author Aaron Blabey, is a complete twist on what we know about planet Earth and our pets.

In this book, Earth is part of an intergalactic TV show where the players use avatars to try and destroy Earth. Their avatars are the pets we allow into our homes. These pets can control human minds, making them do things that could destroy Earth – such as not recycling and wasting water. Until one day, when a boy called Griff gets a new axolotl as a pet who explains everything that has been going on. It is now down to Griff to save planet Earth…

Highly illustrated, rocket-paced and wacky in humour sense! The only disappointing thing with this book is you don’t find out the ending and you will have to read the second book to see if they save the world – although I’m sure keen readers won’t mind that at all! It is a suitable choice for KS2, particularly years 4 to 6.

The Neverland Thieves

Katie Tsang & Kevin Tsang

Chapter book

Do you know the story of Peter Pan and Captain Hook who lived in Neverland? Did you ever wonder what happened to Neverland and the magical folk who lived there? Well … they are still there. Head towards the second star to the right and carry on until morning and you might just find yourself amongst pirates, mermaids and fairies, living in a magical kingdom where everything is perfect.

Except until recently. People have had things stolen from them (special and personal items) and each group of magical folk are blaming each other and arguing. They need the mystery solving and Neverland needs help!

Meanwhile, Tom, Felix and Daisy find themselves visiting Great Ormond Street hospital regularly. The children each have their own different reasons for being at the hospital, and are somehow thrown together to save Netherland. However, they soon realise that as much as Neverland needs them, they need Neverland – forming a life long friendship and helping each other face their worries and problems.

A fantastic story which fuels the imagination and takes you deeper into Neverland than you have ever been before. The story has reminders of the original characters and story and builds upon it. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and found myself not being able to put the book down, especially as the plot twist was revealed. The story was easy to read and the illustrations through the book added detail.

The story also tackles a difficult topic of childhood cancer and the strain that medical treatment has on the patient and also their friends. I believe that this would make a fantastic class reader in a KS2 class.

Beacons of Light

Gemma Koomen

Picturebook

Told in the narrative style of a story through lively prose and atmospheric illustrations, this book perfectly captures the fascination and romance of lighthouses as it traces their historical development.

The text emphasises the power and danger of natural forces and invites us to marvel and the bravery and ingenuity of lighthouse builders across the centuries. Lighthouses become an example of technological continuity and innovation over centuries which even now are still evolving: some lighthouses have been repurposed as centres for environmental monitoring. The author is careful also to explain their important position in the process of globalisation and to remind the reader that seafaring and the expansion of shipping routes has always brought winners and losers.

At times, the illustrations complement the storytelling – the staircase swirling ‘up and up like a seashell’, for example, is accompanied by a gorgeous picture. At other times they take it over. In the cross section of a lighthouse, we are treated to a visual explanation of how such tall thin buildings can be made into a cosy and practical spaces.

There’s a good balance of the general, the specific and less well-known facts. Apparently, some lighthouses are built with secret rooms while others have been incorporated into churches and mosques. A thoroughly entertaining and wholly satisfying read for KS2.