Children's Books: Hostage heroism

Amid a summer riot, five teenagers take a civil servant hostage. William Sutcliffe's Concentr8 (Bloomsbury, £12.99) is set in a disturbingly recognisable Britain where the government has been unscrupulously doling out ADD drugs but has suddenly withdrawn supplies. Sutcliffe alternates between the voices of the listless lawbreakers, a journalist, a negotiator and a floppy-haired mayor.

The teenagers are held together by subtle loyalties that even they find confusing. There is political exposé; there is comedy and one hostage-taker even achieves a kind of tragic-hero status. This might just become a 21st-century YA classic. Age 13 up.

Dara Palmer's Major Drama by Emma Shevah (Chicken House, £6.99) is bursting with energy, helped by Helen Crawford-White's line drawings and Dara's excitable voice: she is "a teaspoonful of worried" and her "eyes are like squirrels singing karaoke to loud music in the middle of a riot". Not just a zany, school story, Dara also touches brilliantly on the insecurities of being adopted and looking different from your schoolmates. Age seven to 14.

Any kid who has ever drawn an imaginary machine will enjoy Frank Einstein and the Brain Turbo by Jon Scieszka (Amulet, £6.99). The third in a series about schoolboy scientist Frank, his robot sidekicks and his arch-rivals T. Edison and Mr Chimp, it condenses an astounding number of (age-appropriate) human-body facts, with diagrams (and even sign-language lessons), into a genuinely fun adventure for age eight upwards. Also don't miss Frank Einstein and the Electro-finger, in which Frank invents an alternative energy supply and explains more scientific concepts.