We begin the year in Toronto where Tundra are publishing A Good Little Mermaid’s Guide to Bedtime, written by Eija Sumner and illustrated by our Nici Gregory. 2024 is going to be a big year for Nici, who also illustrates a pair of middle-grade novels, Joseph Elliott’s Nora and the Map of Mayhem for Bonnier and our Susie Lloyd’s Badgers Are GO! for DFB, a story that has been cooking for many, many years. I can’t wait to see it take to the page.

Then Kathryn Simmonds – she of grown-up poetry – makes her debut in children’s publishing: Be My Sunflower, with Rosalind Beardshaw, for Walker, is the moving story of Vernon, a seed who is happy in his packet, and reluctant to grow into anything at all, thank you. This will be the first of many from Kathryn.

Vernon the cautious seed shares a lot with the hero of Sarah Tagholm’s We Are The Wibbly! – a niceably relaxing blob in a pond who will not be growing a tail, let alone becoming anything resembling a frog. Jane McGuinness has drawn the most sumptuous art to fit Sarah’s text, which Bloomsbury won at the end of a frothing, frenzied auction. At the other end of life’s journey – and the other end of the year – Sarah’s When Will My Woodlouse Wake Up? will help small people grasp, as gently as they possibly can, the finality of death, in the form of Manu Montoya’s sadly expired creepy-crawly.

April is a month for knightly goings-on. Susie Lloyd’s noble nitwit is back, mansplaining his way into someone’s sandwich in Here Be Giants, as drawn brilliantly by Paddy Donnelly. The far more sensible hero of Leonie Lord’s Grotti finds something small, green and baby-shaped, and swaps his sword and shield for a buggy so that he can ferry it around. Happens to even the manliest of us, I can tell you.

Our Friend Tree follows Dawn Casey’s and Genevieve Godbout’s Apple Cake for Quarto: spare, lyrical poetry and lusciously romantic artwork. And then Catherine Cawthorne kicks off a hugely exciting partnership with Sara Ogilvie for Bloomsbury – The Big Bad Wolf Investigates: Fairy Tales – which asks whether the prince really could have climbed up Rapunzel’s hair. Your favourites stories, brutally fact-checked by science!

Michelle Robinson has two new pairings in 2024: Counting Sheep is a properly funny farmyard counting book with Nicki Dyson for Walker, and Daddy’s Footsteps is a heartfelt father’s day story for Andersen, dinosaurs courtesy of the wonderful Paddy D. Canadians can also watch out for Lobster’s Vacation, easily the most Nova Scotian crustacean-based picturebook in, I’m guessing, a crowded field.

Eoin McLaughlin has a new partnership at Faber with Morag Hood and a delightful story called Goodnight Sun, about a cosmic ball of energy who refuses to go to bed. Rob Jones’ third very loooong board book arrives later in May. Small readers who enjoyed finding Brian’s Bottom will now be asked: Where’s Willy’s Welly? A similarly existential question is posed by Susie Lloyd and Kate Hindley in Who Ate Steve? for Nosy Crow (there’s a clue, for you). And Marcela Ferreira embarks on a new partnership with Dan Chambers for OUP (already more in the pipeline from them) with the brilliant Bear vs Dragon.

Autumn Feast, gorgeously illustrated by Cinyee Chiu, completes Sean Taylor’s and Alex Morss’ season cycle for Quarto, while Sean has two Walker books this year: the foolishly funny Natterjack Toad Can’t Believe It! with Kathyrn Durst and his very original guide to how-to-write-poetry-for-tinies with Sam Usher, You’re a Poet.

And finally, Lucy Catchpole – yes, her! – has written a book of her own! Mama Car is illustrated by Karen George for Faber, and comes from the same world as What Happened to You? and You’re So Amazing! but it’s not a Joe book. Joe has long since grown up and traded his sword for a family car – you might glimpse him in the background – but this one’s the story of his little girl and her mother, and her mother’s wheelchair.