The year may be off to a dismal start, but January’s best books for children are filled with adventurous magic. For readers of nine-plus, BB Alston’s Amari and the Night Brothers (Egmont) is a Chosen One fantasy with a fabulous protagonist: a whip-smart black girl from the projects. Amari is convinced her brilliant brother Quinton isn’t dead, but the police have given up investigating his disappearance. Stumbling across a mysterious briefcase and an invitation to try out for the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, Amari discovers the everyday world’s occult underbelly – and her own powerful magical gift. A splendidly imaginative debut, ideal for fans of the Percy Jackson or Nevermoor series.

Another debut, Lesley Parr’s The Valley of Lost Secrets (Bloomsbury), follows Jimmy in wartime, evacuated with his brother to a Welsh mining village, as he slowly acclimatises to his new surroundings. But when Jimmy finds a hidden skull, he unearths a secret that has haunted the community for years. Atmospheric, direct and gripping, with a superbly assured narrative voice, this book is woven through with powerful themes: grief, belonging and making peace with the past.

Liz Kessler’s When the World Was Ours (Simon & Schuster) is a more challenging second world war story, for readers who can handle history’s most painful truths. Told from the perspectives of three children – Leo and Elsa, both Jewish, and misfit Max, their friend – it begins on a perfect day of celebration in Vienna. As Hitler rises to power, the children are wrenched apart; and as they travel to England, Czechoslovakia and Germany, they are changed by what they endure. Vital glimmers of hope enlighten this profoundly poignant book, chronicling just how easily the unthinkable becomes the everyday.

For confident readers of about seven-plus, there’s enticing comic fantasy in Amy Sparkes’s The House at the Edge of Magic (Walker), starring orphan pickpocket Nine. Nine steals a tiny house only to find that she must break the curse holding a flamboyant wizard, a lugubrious troll and a pugnacious sentient spoon trapped inside it. This energetic, inventive romp has a touch of the late, great Diana Wynne Jones.

Nonfiction lovers will plunge into Fantastically Great Women Scientists and Their Stories (Bloomsbury), the first in Kate Pankhurst’s new series of illustrated feminist biographies, now expanded for independent readers from her wildly successful picture books. Featuring Marie Curie, Mae Jemison, Tu Youyou and several others, it deploys just the right amount of lively, fascinating detail to inform and inspire.

For five-plus, Jion Sheibani’s The Worries: Sohal Finds a Friend (Puffin) features Sohal, a small boy with a lot of worries. But what happens when Hurt, Alone, Fail and the rest of the worry-gang manifest as fluffy creatures and follow him to school? Funny, sweet and very useful for opening conversations with anxious children, it is great for reading aloud.

In picture books, the moving I Talk Like a River (Walker) by Jordan Scott draws on the author’s own experience of stuttering; when a boy struggles to speak at school, a walk by the river with his dad helps him to find peace. Sydney Smith’s glorious illustrations infuse the pages with glimmering, broken light.

Pure riotous nonsensical joy, Slug in Love (Simon & Schuster) from Rachel Bright and Nadia Shireen is the story of a slug called Doug, who wants a hug – but who will reciprocate Doug’s longing? Bright’s spare, funny rhyming text marries perfectly with Shireen’s bold, flat planes of colour.

Finally, Fidget the Wonder Dog (Puffin) by Patricia Forde and Rachael Saunders features a scruffy, beloved canine adventurer who runs off and gets lost at sea before his eventual safe return. This bouncy odyssey, rich with the irrepressible feel of a child’s wild imaginings, is vividly illustrated and full of warmth.

Teenagers roundup

Concrete Rose
by Angie Thomas, Walker, £7.99
Seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter is a “little homie” in the King Lords, selling drugs on the side to help tide things over at home. But his heart isn’t in it – and when he hears he’s about to become a father, he’s determined to extricate himself from the dangerous gang life that has claimed so many of his family and friends. Walking away, however, is not so easy. Thomas’s prequel to the award-winning The Hate U Give investigates the pride and pain of being a black boy on the brink of manhood with inimitable humour, clarity and pathos.

First Day of My Life
by Lisa Williamson, David Fickling, £12.99
It’s GCSE results day, and Frankie is expecting her best friend, Jojo, to walk with her to school. When she doesn’t show, and a local baby goes missing, Frankie thinks nothing of it – until Jojo calls, and she hears crying in the background. Enlisting the help of her ex-boyfriend Ram, Frankie sets out on an epic journey to track Jojo down, but what they find at the end of it will change everything. Funny, poignant and sensitive, Williamson’s magnificent third novel looks tenderly at friendship, first love, teen pregnancy and family dynamics.

The Humiliations of Welton Blake
by Alex Wheatle, Barrington Stoke, £7.99
For younger teens, or pre-teens, Wheatle’s third book for easy-reading publisher Barrington Stoke features Welton, the 12-year-old hero, as he somehow manages to score a date with gorgeous Carmella McKenzie. Everything goes downhill from there, as Welton pukes over a classmate, discovers his mum’s superannuated boyfriend is moving in, and manages to catch the eye of the scariest girl in school … Wheatle’s characteristic lively language, impassioned Star Wars references and colourful invented insults make for a brief but riotously relatable slapstick romp, ideal for reluctant readers.