Every book is a journey, and in this month’s round-up we get transported through space and time and believe in impossible things.

Jaclyn Moriarty’s A Corner of White, teetering between reality and fantasy, will appeal to her existing Young Adult audience and find new ones with its broad scope and generous room for interpretation. A teenage girl in a world we might recognise writes to a teenage boy in a world that is left-field but oddly familiar: The Kingdom of Cello.

In Cello, colours act like natural disasters, tearing through small towns, causing devastation and taking lives. But how to convey this to a girl who lives in Cambridge, England? Only letters can pass through the two worlds in book one and I can’t wait to see if the teenagers get to meet in book two.

In David Levithan’s Every Day the main character, known to us as “A”, is transported from body to body – always the body of a sixteen year old, and never more than a few hours away from the last one. “A” is respectful and thoughtful about every teenager he inhabits, but when he falls in love with a girl he faces some truly difficult dilemmas.

Levithan is very thorough as he takes us on a journey from one teenage ‘type’ to the next – showing us great diversity in terms of sexuality, family background, lifestyle and physical shape.

From one soul darting from body to body to Kat Zhang’s novel What’s Left Of Me in which it is the norm for two souls to be woven together in one body, but also for one to eventually dominate while the lesser fades away. Eva and Addie start out the same – taking turns to control the movements of the body they inhabit – but when it becomes clear that there is no ‘recessive soul’, that neither one will quietly ‘go to sleep’, Eva and Addie have to lie to protect themselves because hybrids are considered a threat to society and locked away.

We’re back to one soul per body in Pamela Freeman’s beautiful little book for 7+, Princess Betony and the Unicorn. Humans are strictly forbidden in the Wild Forest but Princess Betony must take the risk to search for her mother, who is a dryad.

This is a lovely hardback, about the size of a Peter Rabbit book, which makes it just right for little hands. There’s also a website here.

Our Children’s and YA specialist at Readings Malvern, Athina Clarke, loved The Peculiar written by 18-year-old Stefan Bachmann.

This time the journey is a race against time as Bartholomew Kettle faces dark and magical challenges to rescue his sister, a changeling.

Athina says: ‘This book is a wonderful mix of gothic, high fantasy and suspenseful mystery, with a dash of steampunk thrown in for good measure. It will appeal to readers 10 and up, as well as adults who enjoy fantasy. I loved it.’

If journeys through time appeal to you, our Classic of the month is my childhood favourite, Charlotte Sometimes, in which a girl at boarding school in the 1950s swaps places with a girl in 1918.

Beautiful language, perhaps a tad old-fashioned (but that’s no bad thing in a book with such context), but the insights about identity are brilliant and girls of around 10 will love accompanying Charlotte as she bravely keeps up her spirits both in her own world and someone else’s.

Onto picture books now and our first journey is a cycling race from Paris to Nice, Monsieur Albert Rides to Glory. Ever-popular Bob Graham teams up with his brother-in-law, debut author Peter Smith for some playful, witty verse about Monsieur Albert, a sprightly septuagenarian who declares he’s fit for a race.

Exhausted after that exertion, in Good Night Sleep Tight it’s a journey to bed we go on but it’s a lively, playful one.

Our Hawthorn specialist, Alexa Dretzke, remembers reading this to her daughters years ago and is thrilled to see it making a comeback. The rhymes that ‘Skinny Doug’ uses when he’s putting Bonnie and Ben to sleep are perfectly complimented by Judy Horacek’s bright illustrations.

Alexa calls it “a tribute to the everlasting joy of nursery rhymes by two of Australia’s master storytellers”.

After so many journeys, thank goodness we can relax with our final book, the aptly named Today We Have No Plans by the brilliant team that is Jane Godwin and Anna Walker.

The same family that appeared in the gorgeous All Through The Year is back. After they make it through a typical busy week they feel very grateful for Sunday, a totally plan-free zone.

If you’re feeling overstretched and long for a day off, this is the picture book for you.

Thanks for joining me on another children’s and YA book journey, and happy reading.

[[emily-gale-staff-pic]] Emily Gale