Recommended reading books for primary & secondary aged children in the UK
E. L. Norry is a children’s author whose work spans historical and fantasy fiction for middle-grade readers. She wrote Voices: Son of the Circus – A Victorian Story for Scholastic’s Voices series, a novel inspired by the life of Pablo Fanque. The book was published on 5 September 2019 (ISBN 9781407191416).
Norry is also the author of the fantasy sequence set at a children’s home on the edge of Exmoor. The first novel, Fablehouse, was published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books on 8 June 2023 (ISBN 9781526649539), followed by Fablehouse: Heart of Fire on 25 April 2024 (ISBN 9781526649560).
In addition to fiction, she has written children’s non-fiction including Football Legends: Lionel Messi (Scholastic, 2020) and The Extraordinary Life of Nelson Mandela (Puffin, 2020).
Fablehouse was nominated for the Carnegie Medal in 2024.
Children’s books of the year 2025 – our team has picked a shortlist of great children’s and teen titles published in the last 12 months, with fiction, non-fiction and picture books for 3-18 years and a diverse range of prose, poetry and graphic novels. Vote now!
Fables for children with titles by Satoshi Kitamura, Joseph Coelho, Sophie Anderson, Petr Horáček, Helen Ward, Poonam Mistry, Sita Brahmachari, Onjali Q. Rauf, Yuval Zommer, and Yaba Badoe.
Children’s book news for August 2025: classroom reading picks, prize winners, nature writing, humour awards, YA headlines, festivals, and policy moves shaping libraries and school resources.
Victorians topic books for children with titles by Mick Manning, E.L Norry, Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Rosen, Catherine Bruton, Philip Pullman, Berlie Doherty, Terry Deary, Lindsay Galvin and Kieran Larwood.
Here’s our selection of top new titles coming out in Summer 2025. These reading recommendations include picture books, poetry, early and middle-grade fiction; young adult novels and non-fiction.
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