Sara Keating (younger titles) and Claire Hennessy (YA) select their favourite books of 2017…

There are expected inclusions, but also some less-mentioned titles, as in this section of Claire Hennessy’s choices:

For high-concept plots supported by exemplary writing, look no further than the glorious page-turner that is MA Bennett’s S.T.A.G.S. (Hot Key Books, £7.99). Not clicking? Try Kendra Fortmeyer’s Hole In The Middle (Atom, £7.99), where teenage ‘emptiness’ is made literal, or Aaron Starmer’s Spontaneous (Canongate, £7.99), in which leaving-school-blues collide with spontaneous combustion, or Adam Silvera’s They Both Die At The End(Simon & Schuster, £7.99), which posits meeting the love of your life the day you’re both scheduled to die.

Saving lyrical wonderfulness for last: the Irish authors have it. Sarah Carroll’s The Girl In Between (Simon & Schuster, £7.99), Moira Fowley-Doyle’s The Spellbook of the Lost and Found (Corgi, £7.99) and Deirdre Sullivan’s Tangleweed and Brine (Little Island, €16; illustrations by Karen Vaughan) offer up haunting and stunning takes on what it means to be a teenage girl.

full piece >>> https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-best-children-s-and-ya-books-of-2017-1.3311245

The Lotterys Plus One by Emma Donoghue reviewed by Linda BUckley-Archer

Emma Donoghue, the award-winning novelist best known for Room, has made her first foray into children’s fiction. The Lotterys Plus One is set in cosmopolitan Toronto and features a household that embodies diversity and respect for the planet. It’s a tale that’s funny, heartwarming and quietly provocative.

There is a huge difference between writing about children and for children. In sharp contrast to the grim tale of five-year-old Jack and his virtuoso narration of Room, Donoghue’s latest novel is full of warmth and light, its third-person perspective introducing us to a large and, in some respects, utopian family unit.

via The Lotterys Plus One by Emma Donoghue review – it’s a family affair | Books | The Guardian.

In the UK, you wouldn’t want under-12s to have much contact with doormen – ours being burly negotiators who remove the ill-behaved from nightclubs.

In New York, however, doormen are the guardians of gracious apartment buildings and, thus, civilisation itself. One such building is the star of The Doorman’s Repose, by Caldecott Medal winner Chris Raschka (Faber, £11.99), an urbane collection of New Yorker-ish short stories. It begins with a new doorman – who, disastrously, knows nothing about baseball – taking up his post. Otis, the elevator, plays matchmaker; Liesl, the boiler, loses her va-va-voom; the mice are into jazz and psychotherapy, and the humans in these droll, Lemony Snicket-like stories are only slightly less variegated.

full set of reviewa via Fiction for older children reviews – tales of the cities | Books | The Guardian.

Half a dozen YA reviews by Catherine Hong, a contributing editor at Elle Decor, blogs about children’s books at mrslittle.com.

via Summer Y.A. Escapes from Sarah Dessen, Andrew McCarthy and More – The New York Times.