Children’s fiction: if trees could talk, what would they say?

A new Irish publisher with a strong children’s catalogue is always worth celebrating, as are the two new titles arriving from Natural World Publishing this spring. ER Murray’s Arabella Pepper: The Wild Detective (8+, €12) is a middle-grade mystery with a pair of compelling central characters: fish-out-of-water Arabella, and her companion crow, Blue.

Neither are happy with their new home in Greytown, where Arabella’s mum has a prestigious new job. With no wild animals to track, like she used to back on her former island home, Arabella compiles case notes on her suspicious new neighbours instead: the Pinch family are not all they seem. With vivid illustrations from Monika Pollack, this is a fun, fast-paced manifesto for flexibility in the face of adversity.

Bex Sheridan’s distinctive picture book Wild Eyes (3+, €10), meanwhile, targets younger readers, with an attractive black and white colour palette enhanced by pops of primary yellows and blues. Narrated by a wild watcher in an urban garden, it directs its gaze towards human activity, encouraging the reader to see the link between their actions and the creatures who they share the earth with.

Once I Was a Tree (Nosy Crow, 3+, £12.99) gives the natural world its own voice and agency too, presenting a laugh-aloud version of the life cycle of a tree, “written by a book, with help from Eoin McLaughlin”, and full colour illustrations from Guilherme Karsten.

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It begins with a seed’s early undigested adventures in a squirrel’s bottom, passes through a nourishing relationship with beetle dung, before embracing the glory of a tree’s full green growth. Finally, the book reveals its journey to the form in which you, the reader, are enjoying the immortality of its bounteous gifts: “Because books are full of stories, And stories can be about anything … [they] make us laugh and cry and learn and grow.” A metafictional delight.

The Friendship Cup: Palestine to Ireland by Winnie Clarke (Mercier, 8+, €14.99) and 17 Martin Street (O’Brien Press, 10+, €41.99), a graphic novel adapted by Alan Nolan and Jason Browne from Marilyn Taylor’s 2008 novel of the same name, both provide fertile opportunity for children to reflect on historic and contemporary events.

Clarke’s novel is based on a real-life cultural exchange from 2017, when a group of children from Gaza came to Ireland to play football with Irish teams. Clarke shifts the action to 2023. Co-operation is more important than competition here, and the Irish and Palestinian children make strong friendships, which endure even when the tournament is over and the Palestinian team returns home. When the Irish children hear the news of intensified conflict, they wonder what they can do for their friends abroad. Clarke does not avoid the difficult questions raised by the ongoing crisis in Gaza, and while the individual stories are worked out in the narrative, it is clear that the characters we meet here are the lucky ones.

17 Martin Street is set in Dublin in 1940 among a mixed community in Portobello, where Irish families like the Byrnes are living side-by-side with recent refugees from Nazi Germany, and not always happily. Ben is delighted to work as shabbos boy for the new arrivals next door, but his father has different views on immigration. When Ben persists in pursuing friendship with the Goldens, however, embarking on a mission to help an illegal refugee get to a place of safety, his father is presented with an opportunity to change his mind. Cultural differences are sensitively explored in scenes that unfold succinctly and with visual flair, while the high-stakes plot offers a nuanced representation of contemporary political events through a historic lens. The triumph of compassion is a reminder that individual action can make a big difference.

Finally, Jenny Pearson’s Shrapnel Boys (Usborne, 10+, £7.99) and Westfallen (Bloomsbury, 10+, £8.99), by Ann and Ben Brashares, put the reader right up close to the action of the second World War. We spend time with children who remain in London as their peers disappear to the safety of the countryside. At first Ronnie is relieved not to be evacuated when war breaks out, but as he watches his community mobilise against the foreign enemy, he discovers his younger brother has been recruited by a fascist infiltrator to their family unit: there are terrifying battles to be fought on the domestic front too.

Pearson’s book is charged with a propulsive plot that offers a slanted perspective on well known historical events, and characters whose preoccupations are not so different from our own.

Westfallen is set at the end of the second World War, and 80 years after, offering a thrilling blend of historical and speculative perspectives on history and what might have been. The book opens in 2024, when three former besties are forced to reignite their friendship at the funeral of their shared pet and come across an old radio, a portal to the past. The dual timelines and competing voices make a compelling contrast between then and now, but the children find common ground, and a common enemy, that drives the plot with page-turning, filmic agency, as they work together to stop Germany winning the war.