Children’s Literature News April 2026
Children’s book news for April 2026: Michael Rosen wins the Hans Christian Andersen Award, CLiPPA and UKLA shortlists arrive, and Puffin launches its new picture book list, Puffin Studio.
Recommended reading books for primary & secondary aged children in the UK
Maggie O’Farrell is a British-Irish author known for her novels for adults and children. She studied at New Hall, University of Cambridge. O’Farrell’s debut novel, After You’d Gone, was published in 2000 and won the Betty Trask Award. Her subsequent novels include My Lover’s Lover (2002), The Distance Between Us (2004), which won the Somerset Maugham Award, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2006), The Hand That First Held Mine (2010), which received the Costa Book Award for Best Novel, Instructions for a Heatwave (2013), and This Must Be the Place (2016).
O’Farrell’s memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death, was published in 2017. Her novel Hamnet (2020), inspired by the life of William Shakespeare’s son, won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020 and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. In 2022, she published The Marriage Portrait, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2023.
O’Farrell’s first children’s book, Where Snow Angels Go, illustrated by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini, was published in 2020 by Walker Books. Her work has been translated into numerous languages and has received multiple literary awards. Hamnet was named Waterstones Book of the Year in 2020.

Children’s book news for April 2026: Michael Rosen wins the Hans Christian Andersen Award, CLiPPA and UKLA shortlists arrive, and Puffin launches its new picture book list, Puffin Studio.
Sixth Form reading list book recommendations. Here’s our list of 50+ recommended books for year 12 and year 13 students with an inspiring and diverse range of titles by Wole Soyinka, Te-Ping Chen, Susan Fletcher, Michael Rosen, and more.
Here’s our selection of top new titles coming out in Autumn 2024. These reading recommendations include picture books, early and middle-grade fiction; young adult novels, poetry and non-fiction.
Season 1, Episode 4 of the School Reading List podcast. With new book post, 30 great books for October 2022, a look at our recent favourite children’s books survey and tips for promoting children’s books to schools.
Here’s our selection of top new titles coming out in Autumn 2022. These reading recommendations include picture books, early and middle-grade fiction; young adult novels and non-fiction.
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