Books for children

My Dad by Steve Smallman, illustrated by Sean Julian (Little Tiger; €13.03 HB) is narrated in fun rhyming couplets by a small bear who lists the wonderful things that other fathers can do — cooking, reading a book, putting up a tent — all of which defeat his dad.

But great skills are not necessarily what make a great dad. A treat for children age two and up — and their dads.

Azzi In Between by Sarah Garland (Frances Lincoln; €15.40 HB). Little Azzi’s happy life with her parents and grandma is changed when the street is filled with marching soldiers and loud planes fly over the house. Late one night the family flee the horrors of war to join other refugees in a cramped boat to sail to England. Azzi finds it hard to settle in school, where she doesn’t understand the language. But most of all she misses Grandma, who insists on staying in the old country. With stirring illustrations and beautiful ending, this is an inspiring book for readers eight-plus.

Dead Time by Anne Cassidy (Bloomsbury; €8.35) The best approach to reading this mystery story is to treat it as the first part of a trilogy. The challenge for protagonist Rose is survival: her grandmother Anna‘s suffocating guardianship is driving her crazy; her classmates resent her perceived snobbery, and now her stepbrother has turned up after a five-year silence. Their mutual quest is to resolve the mystery of their respective parents’ disappearance some five years previously, as well as rebuilding their fraught stepbrother/ sister relationship. Rose’s life becomes ultra-complicated when she witnesses the murder of a student who five minutes earlier had been harassing her. Shortly after this a second student is found dead. This subplot is satisfactorily dealt with but less so the search for answers to the parents’ disappearance. Though many questions are left unanswered, there is so much else going on that we can look forward to the sequel. Young Adult.