Here is our guide to novels published in 2024 to put under your teenager's tree.
Children's literature is rich in nuggets, which know how to make people dream as well as confront serious and crucial issues through fiction. In this guide, we offer you impactful children's books published this year – particularly around SF/fantasy – to put under the tree. Don’t hesitate to dig into our SF guide and our fantasy guide.
Enter the world (Claire Duvivier)
We know Claire Duvivier for her important contribution to French fantasy with A long journey and the saga The Watchtower. She now dedicates her pen to science fiction and, incidentally, to children's literature. Enter the world is the story of a society that survived the end of the world. Like 25 other teenagers, Xabi lives in the underground domain of the Danube, where their life is organized around various lessons, like in an academy. But when strangers come to visit them, they will have to come out of this protective bubble. We will have to “enter the world”, but what world is it in question?
If it is indeed a form of dystopia, Claire Duvivier's approach differs slightly from the genre: Enter the world is a fairly contemplative novel, if not a calming read. This is not incompatible with a narrative tension, punctuated by a slight anxiety: that of being placed on the same level as these young people, without having the elements of response. Because the reader must also make the same initiatory journey.
Enter the worldClaire Duvivier, École des Loisirs, 352 p., €17
Alcatraz versus the infamous LibrariansVolume 1
Brandon Sanderson is one of the most imaginative fantasy authors of our time and he proves it with this newly published children's saga in paperback. The title comes from the hero: Alcatraz Smedry. This orphan is quite unlucky, impossible for him to pass anywhere without breaking anything. But that's still nothing compared to the sudden arrival in his life of his unstable grandfather who takes him into parallel worlds to fight the infamous librarians.
A perfect cocktail of incredible adventure and devastating humor. A humor all the more omnipresent as the author uses deliberate digressions specifically aimed at confusing us – the worst being that we actually start to like this crazy narration.
Note thatAlcatraz is a saga in six “books”. In this pocket edition, each work has two “books”. It is therefore possible to offer the complete package.
Alcatraz versus the infamous LibrariansBrandon Sanderson, Translated by Juliette Saumande, Paperback, 496 p., €14.90
Blue cracks (Jérôme Leroy)
A devastated land, a near future, but crazy love. The one between Tristan and Anna, two childhood friends. And then comes the “Catastrophe”, a dark, major event that will separate them. Fortunately, Anna didn't disappear. But to find it, we will have to navigate through space-time, via the famous “blue cracks”.
And Blue cracks is a gripping science fiction novel, it is also and above all a novel about love as a force capable of defying space and time. With the poetic ability that we know from Jérôme Leroy.
Blue CracksJérôme Leroy, Syros, 386 p., €17.95
Yaran's Challenge (Estelle Faye)
For Yaran, coming of age is going to be an adventure in the truest sense. Because in the Clear City, this means entering the arena to succeed in the Great Challenge: defeating the beast, captured in distant enemy lands. But… is she really a beast, in the pejorative sense? In the arena, Yaran will be confronted with emotions. And to follow his convictions to the end, he will have to set off on a perilous quest.
It's a very short text, but Estelle Faye proves that, even over 60 pages, she never misses her mark – a great adventure.
Yaran's ChallengeEstelle Faye, Rageot, 64 p., 5,10 €
Don't you see anything coming? (Amélie Antoine)
Several dystopias have been cited in this literary guide. But let us never forget that some children, some teenagers, experience a dystopia on a daily basis: that of school bullying. This is the nightmare that the main character here, Orlane, will experience when she arrives at a new college. Everything is there, from his physique to his personality to his slightest actions and gestures. Likewise, the harasser and her clique never run out of ideas for ways to harass.
Oui, Don't you see anything coming is a poignant book. But it’s also an important read. For students as well as parents and teachers. You should also not miss the afterword by Emmanuelle Piquet, an essayist specializing in the subject of school bullying.
Don't you see anything coming?Amélire Antoine, Syros, 304 p., €15.95
