Laurinda takes the stage: ‘Private school culture needs to change – the insularity, the entitlement’

Author Alice Pung and the two minds behind a new adaptation reflect on the beloved story of a girl navigating high school – Mean Girls meets Fight Club, with an Asian-Australian twist

Children’s and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels

An angry kitten; a guide to rewilding; Mabinogion magic; wartime adventures; Olympian gods; first love and more; plus the best YA novels

The Guardian view on book prizes: don’t forget the children

Editorial: In a changing awards landscape, fiction for young readers should not be left out in the cold

Picture books for children – reviews

The human body is brought to life, difference is celebrated – and a very long dinosaur is tickled pink

Joan Lingard obituary

Prolific author best known for the Kevin and Sadie young adult novels charting friendship across the divide in 1970s Belfast

Never fear! Mo Willems’ spectacularly unscary monster is gobbled up by kids

Manual Cinema’s stage version of Leonardo the Terrible Monster is heading for the Edinburgh fringe – and its adaptors hope it inspires audiences to create their own creatures

‘There’s obviously a market’: why are there so many children’s books about anxiety?

Publishing is awash with titles for kids focused on worries, feelings and emotional literacy – and parents are buying them in droves

Rooted by Sarah Langford; Regenesis by George Monbiot reviews – how to fix farming

Modern agriculture isn’t working. Two energising books come up with contrasting solutions

Children’s books world reacts to ‘horrible loss’ of Blue Peter book awards

BookTrust which ran the awards said its limited resources would now be directed to disadvantaged families

Marcus Rashford Book Club to give away 50,000 books this summer

Initiative led by the footballer will distribute copies of his own children’s adventure book to young readers with little access to reading

Joseph Coelho chosen as Britain’s new children’s laureate

The poet and children’s author, who takes over from Cressida Cowell, was praised as an ‘extraordinary advocate for making poetry accessible to all’

Young adult books round-up – reviews

The highs and lows of first-love relationships, modern-day mythology and summer escapism are among this month’s pick of teenage fiction

Shock ending: how the Costa book awards changed reading – and pitted husband against wife

After 50 years, the prize has been scrapped. How did it change Britain’s literary landscape? And what happened at the awards when Margaret Drabble was seated next to Theresa May?

Malorie Blackman’s ‘dynamic imaginary worlds’ win her the PEN Pinter prize

Noughts & Crosses author praised by judges for ‘challenging issues of injustice in a way that is totally engaging’

Children’s and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels

A secret day out at the seaside; a celebration of wildflowers; dinosaurs, spies and children with superpowers