Young Quills reviews 2024
The Young Quills Awards for best historical fiction for young people
Published: 25th April 2024
The Young Quills books for each year must be published for the first time in English in the year preceding the competition – so 2023 for this year’s selection. Divided by age suitability the books are given to schools on the condition that the children and young people there write a review of the book following our criteria. Those reviews are used as the basis for us to create the shortlist from which the winners are selected.
You can read some of the children and young people's reviews of all this year's books via the links below. Shortlisted books are marked with an asterisk:
For readers aged 5-8 years
For readers aged 8-11 years
- Stone Arrows*
- Operation Banana*
- The Storm and the Minotaur*
- Code Name Kingfisher*
- Blackbeard's Treasure*
- Fablehouse*
- A Different Kind of Freedom: A Romani Story*
- Vita and the Gladiator*
- Rosie Raja: Mission to Cairo
- The Disappearing Diamond
- Deep Sea Diver
- Secrets at Number 6
- Secrets at Number 7
- Peril on the Atlantic
- Scareground
- Time Machine Next Door: Explorers and Milkshakes
- Evie and Rhino
- Cosima Unfortunate Steals a Star
- Finding Treasure Island
- I Spy: a Bletchley Park Mystery
- Portraits and Poison (The Lizzie & Belle Mysteries)
- The Grinning Throat
For readers aged 11-13 years
- The Song Walker*
- The Stolen Songbird*
- Rivet Boy*
- Where the River Takes Us*
- The Diary of Sarah Forbes Bonetta: A Novel*
- Wolf Road*
- Through Water and Fire*
- City of Stolen Magic
- Enola Holmes & the Black Barouche
- Her Majesty's League of Remarkable Young Ladies
- The Body in the Blitz (The Ministry of Unladylike Activity 2)
- The Whistlers in the Dark