Pam Macintyre

The picture book take on affluenza, Colin Thompson’s The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley (Lothian), illustrated by ‘Amy Lissiat’, with its charming ratty protagonist, Riley, has nods at Van Gogh, Munch, Da Vinci, Botticelli and Raphael, and pokes delicious fun at our acquisitive, self-obsessed, ‘microwave-video-DVD-SMS-Internet-big-car-cost-more-than-yours’ society. Paul Jennings’s first novel, How Hedley Hopkins Did a Dare… (Puffin), based on his experiences as a newly arrived immigrant child in 1950s Australia, evokes powerfully that era of dunny men and getting the strap at school, through the eyes of a sensitive, imaginative boy. Keirin Meehan’s In the Monkey Forest (Puffin) is a gripping adventure–mystery set in Japan, intertwining the present day with the past fate of the indigenous people of northern Japan, the Ainu. Evocative settings, and Nameless, a pixie with attitude, cement its appeal.

Stephanie Owen Reeder

Children’s authors and illustrators have the ability to distil complex issues and to explore social problems in an understated but effective way. Two excellent examples of this – as well as of superb illustration and fine writing – are the engaging picture book Oscar’s Half Birthday (Walker), by Bob Graham, and the challenging, uncompromising Once (Penguin), by Morris Gleitzman. In Oscar, Graham has created a domestic ‘fairytale’ that celebrates the importance of family, while also championing the multicultural community and the restorative properties of nature in an urban existence. In Once, Gleitzman masterfully deals with the difficult subject of the Holocaust, exploring through a child’s eyes the consequences of the removal of basic democratic rights, such as freedom of speech and habeas corpus, in a book that is simultaneously humorous, horrifying and life-affirming. I recommend both for the clarity of their vision and expression, and for their humanity.

Mike Shuttleworth

While Bill Condon’s No Worries (UQP) may have some familiar YA elements, his version of the work–parents– girlfriend triangle is fresh, affecting and crisply unsentimental. Dropping out of school, Brian joins the world of working men, but faces bigger challenges with his bipolar mother, feckless dad and a girl called Emma. Condon creates a story that is almost Carveresque. In David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy (HarperCollins), Paul has always known he is gay, but it wasn’t confirmed until he was in kindergarten. His high school is gay-friendly, but that doesn’t make falling in love or staying in love any easier. Novels of gay teenage life aren’t supposed to be funny and optimistic, but this US story happily flaunts convention. If you thought you knew Morris Gleitzman, think again. Once has its comic moments, but it is a tightly controlled story of Felix, a young Jewish boy caught in the jaws of the Nazi war machine. Frightening, but not without hope.

Ruth Starke

Authenticity of voice is vitally important in YA fiction, and the authors of two excellent début novels both scored a bullseye. In Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now (Penguin), the anorexic, self-centred Daisy is sent from New York to spend a summer with rural English cousins and is unexpectedly caught up in a war – one set slightly in the future and not unconnected with terrorism. Daisy is the narrator, and her voice is so dazzlingly original I was hooked from the first page. A similar feat was achieved by Calma Harrison, the too-smart-for-her-own-good but totally engaging narrator of Barry Jonsberg’s The Whole Business with Kiffo and the Pitbull (Allen & Unwin). Jonsberg’s take on classroom warfare and youth culture made me laugh out loud. I loved, too, the sheer energy, originality and utter coolness of Scott Westerfield’s So Yesterday (Penguin), a clever unravelling of a mystery that, along the way, exposes everything young consumers ought to know about fads, advertising, marketing, trendsetters and ‘coolhunters’. Buying Nikes will never be the same again.