Best known for The Snowman, this is Briggs in a very different mood. Ug and his family live in the Stone Age, with stone blankets, cold caves, stone trousers . . . Ug’s attempts to improve things are not appreciated. In a comic-strip style, funny, and thought-provoking.

World War l and the famous story of the Christmas football match on the front line in 1914, told through both words and pictures. Shows a moment of relief in the midst of the horror of the trenches. The text is quite challenging.

On a lighter note, this book is one big laugh as it takes the reader back to the time of the Romans. Perilus is crazy about chariot racing and being trained by the best charioteer in Rome—but all is not straightforward. Great fun.

An original look at World War ll. A scrapbook tells the story in a collection of collages, comic strips, drawings, letters, mementos, cartoons, and more. One boy’s story gives a real sense of what war was like for the whole family.

Charlie thinks her school project is going to be boring—the Victorians, yawn. But then she dreams up Lottie, a Victorian servant girl, about her age, and starts to write her diary. Suddenly a whole new world comes to life and Charlie is lost in her project, and the reader learns a lot about Victorian times.

A brother and sister are separated from their family when India becomes independent in 1947, and must journey through the chaos and danger this causes. A moving story that gives a sense of the horrors of the time, but the central characters make it a very readable story of hope. For readers at the top of the age range.

Shirley Hughes is best known for her picture books; this is her first novel. It tells the story of Paolo, caught up in World War ll in Italy in 1944. The city of Florence is occupied by the Germans but there’s a strong resistance movement. Paolo, with his local knowledge and his bicycle, is able to help.

The extraordinary story of a group of settlers in early America as they realize that their only hope of survival is if the new train stops at their ‘town’. The characters are strongly drawn, and there’s a great sense of time and place as well as a reflection of the harshness of life for those involved in the opening up of America. There’s plenty of humour too.

A fast-moving story of mystery and revenge set in eighteenth-century London. A man is found dead, pierced by an arrow, and with a strange picture card in his hand. Similar deaths follow and soon Tom Marlowe is on the case, determined to solve the mystery.

Joey, a farm horse, is shipped off to France in World War l, and this is his story. Through his eyes we see the horrors and cruelty of war. The book has become famous since its stage adaption at the National Theatre.

This story takes us back 6,000 years to when there is danger in the land. Only twelve-year-old Torah and his wolf-cub companion can find a way to defeat it, and they travel through forests and across glaciers in this ancient world. The first book in the series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness.