Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevado

Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people...

In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal's office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash.

In a dual narrative novel in verse that brims with both grief and love, award-winning and bestselling author Elizabeth Acevedo writes about the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication.

The Everlasting Story of Nory by Nicholson Baker

Nory Winslow wants to be a dentist or a designer of pop-up books. She likes telling stories and inventing dolls. She has nightmares about teeth, which may explain her career choice. She is going to school in England, where she is mocked for her accent and her friendship with an unpopular girl, and she has made it through the year without crying.

Nicholson Baker follows Nory as she interacts with her parents and peers, thinks about God and death-watch beetles, and dreams of cows with pointed teeth. In this precocious child he gives us a heroine as canny and as whimsical as Lewis Carroll's Alice and evokes childhood in all its luminous weirdness.

The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks

People are really quite simple, and they have simple needs. Food, water, light, space, privacy. Maybe a small measure of dignity. A bit of freedom. What happens when someone simply takes all that away?

Chinglish by Sue Cheung

Jo Kwan is a teenager growing up in 1980s Coventry with her annoying little sister, too-cool older brother, a series of very unlucky pets and utterly bonkers parents. But unlike the other kids at her new school or her posh cousins, Jo lives above her parents' Chinese takeaway. And things can be tough – whether it's unruly customers or the snotty popular girls who bully Jo for being different. Even when she does find a BFF who actually likes Jo for herself, she still has to contend with her erratic dad's behaviour. All Jo dreams of is breaking free and forging a career as an artist.

Told in diary entries and doodles, Jo's brilliantly funny observations about life, family and char siu make for a searingly honest portrayal of life on the other side of the takeaway counter.

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl's fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

Bearmouth by Liz Hyder

It only taykes one person to start a revolushun.

Life in Bearmouth will never change – at least that’s what people say. They work hard to bring wealth to the Master, toiling in dark mines and brutal conditions for six long days each week.

When young friends Newt and Devlin start to question the system, they set in motion a chain of events that could destroy their entire world.

But freedom is worth fighting for.

In Darkness by Nick Lake

In the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake a boy is trapped beneath the rubble of a ruined hospital: thirsty, terrified and alone. 'Shorty' is a child of the slums, a teenage boy who has seen enough violence to last a lifetime, and who has been inexorably drawn into the world of the gangsters who rule Site Soleil: men who dole out money with one hand and death with the other. But Shorty has a secret: a flame of revenge that blazes inside him and a burning wish to find the twin sister he lost five years ago. And he is marked. Marked in a way that links him with Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Haitian rebel who two-hundred years ago led the slave revolt and faced down Napoleon to force the French out of Haiti. As he grows weaker, Shorty relives the journey that took him to the hospital, a bullet wound in his arm. In his visions and memories he hopes to find the strength to survive, and perhaps then Toussaint can find a way to be free.

The Stars at Oktober Bend by Glenda Millard

Alice is fifteen, with hair as red as fire and skin as pale as bone, but something inside her is broken. She has acquired brain injury, the result of an assault, and her words come out slow and slurred. But when she writes, heartwords fly from her pen. She writes poems to express the words she can't say and leaves them in unexpected places around the town.

Manny was once a child soldier. He is sixteen and has lost all his family. He appears to be adapting to his new life in this country, where there is comfort and safety, but at night he runs, barefoot, to escape the memory of his past. When he first sees Alice, she is sitting on the rusty roof of her river-house, looking like a carving on an old-fashioned ship sailing through the stars.

Gloves Off by Louisa Reid

Lily turns sixteen with two very different sides to her life: school, where she is badly bullied, and home with her mum and dad, warm and comforting but with its own difficulties.

After a particularly terrible bullying incident, Lily's dad determines to give his daughter the tools to fight back.

Introducing her to boxing, he encourages Lily to find her own worth. It is both difficult and challenging but in confronting her own fears she finds a way through that illuminates her life and friendships.

Meeting Rose, and seeing that there is another world out there, enables her to live her own life fully and gives her the knowledge that she is both beautiful and worth it.

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least make it out of her neighborhood one day. As the daughter of an underground rap legend who died before he hit big, Bri’s got big shoes to fill. But now that her mom has unexpectedly lost her job, food banks and shutoff notices are as much a part of Bri’s life as beats and rhymes. With bills piling up and homelessness staring her family down, Bri no longer just wants to make it—she has to make it.

Two Words by Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende (1942-) is the multiple award-winning Chilean author of over 20 books, translated into 35 languages. She is an important figure among a group of South American writers of magic realism. This is a literary genre in which magic elements occur, as if naturally, in an otherwise normal environment. ‘Two Words’, first published in 1989, is a good example of magic realism and of Allende’s rich use of language.

Happily Ever After by Barbara Bleiman

Barbara Bleiman (19550) was born in South Africa but came to England when she was just five years old. Her great grandfather emigrated from Lithuania, in Eastern Europe, to South Africa in the early 1900s. Her parents told her many stories about life for her ancestors in their small Jewish communities in Lithuania and Russia and later in their new home in South Africa. ‘Happily Ever After’, first published in 2011, is based on one of these tales from a way of life that has long since past.

The Hitch-hiker by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl (1916-1990) is perhaps best known for children’s classics such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda. However, he also wrote for adults, mainly short stories, and was famous for stories with an unexpected twist in the ending. ‘The Hitch-hiker’ was first published in 1977.

Old Mrs Chundle by Thomas Hardy

‘Old Mrs Chundle’ was written by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), a famous British writer. Although he wrote the story in the 1880s, it was not published until 1929, after his death. This seems to have been because it was based on a real story and Hardy was worried about offending the people involved.

Dog, Cat, and Baby by Joe R. Lansdale

Joe R. Lansdale (1951-) is an American writer who has published 43 novels and short stories in many genres, including horror and science fiction. He has also written for comics. Much of his writing has a dark humour and features the strange and absurd, such as an aging Elvis Presley battling an Egyptian mummy in an old people’s home, as seen in Bubba Ho-Tep. This story was first published in 1999. Be warned – it’s pretty dark!

The Return by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (1938-) is a Kenyan writer, well known for his novels, short stories and non-fiction, and also his political activism. He has spent time in prison for his campaigning against oppressive Kenyan regimes in the past, something he might well have drawn on for ‘The Return’, first published in 1965. Ngugi originally wrote in English, but switched to writing in his native Gikuyu because he wanted to promote and value his own language and identity.

'Half-Caste' by John Agard

'Search for My Tongue' by Sujata Bhatt

'Six O'Clock News' by Tom Leonard

Match Reports, 1871

These match reports were written in 1871, when the idea of professional footballers playing the game for money was a relatively new thing.

'The Rule of Threes'

Publisher Lonely Planet’ specialises in travel books for adults but this extract comes from a book for children called How to Be a World Explorer: Your All Terrain Training Manual. Chapters include ‘Desert Dangers’, ‘How to abseil into a volcano’, and ‘How to land a plane in an emergency’.

'Vet in Trouble' by James Herriot

This text is from a book called Every Living Thing by James Herriot. The writer’s real name was James Wight and he wrote a long and popular series of books based on his experiences of being a vet in the Yorkshire countryside. The books were also televised.

Literally Amazing Words and Where They Come From by Patrick Shipworth

A stunning nonfiction picture book about the global diversity hidden in the English language.

Did you know that English words come from all over the world and that their meanings have changed along their journey? Our word 'zero' comes from the Arabic word for empty space. 'Companion' is from the Latin for with bread.

With simple descriptions and dazzling, evocative and witty illustrations, this is a fascinating introduction to the rich history and cultural diversity of our language.