Katya Balen studied English at university. Since then she's worked in lots of special schools and is now co-director of Mainspring Arts, which runs creative workshops for neurodivergent people. When she's not writing books or planning projects, she likes to scroll through dog-rescue websites, bake and attempt to keep all her house plants alive. She lives in London with her partner and her ridiculously lazy dog, Raffi.

Angela Harding is a fine artist specialising in nature and wildlife screen-prints as well as lino and vinyl cuts. Her beautiful prints appear in a huge range of galleries and have also been featured in Gardens Illustrated, BBC Countryfile and Country Living.

A classic in the making for anyone who ever longed to be WILD.

October and her dad live in the woods. They sleep in the house Dad built for them and eat the food they grow in the vegetable patches. They know the trees and the rocks and the lake and stars like best friends. They read the books they buy in town again and again until the pages are soft and yellow - until next year's town visit. They live in the woods and they are wild.

And that's the way it is.

Until the year October turns eleven. That's the year October rescues a baby owl. It's the year Dad falls out of the biggest tree in their woods. The year the woman who calls herself October's mother comes back. The year everything changes.

Written in Katya Balen's heart-stoppingly beautiful style, this book is a feast for the senses, filled with the woodsmoke smell of crisp autumn mornings and the sound of wellies squelching in river mud. And, as October fights to find the space to be wild in the whirling chaos of the world beyond the woods, it is also a feast for the soul.

A brave and beautiful book with a big heart. I loved it

What Balen captures in Frank's voice is the authentic experience of being ten and facing up to all the difficulties that brings. His story, and that of his family, will live long in the hearts and minds of its readers

This book has everything: space and wilderness and crisps and code, Max in a wolf suit and a dog called Neil, and life and death and art, and above all a boy called Frank who will break your heart and mend it again and fill you with fizzing hope

The struggles of those with autism and those who love them in a book with an achingly huggable main character

One of my favourite books this year. Beautiful and uplifting, a powerful evocation of nature and wildness that I found both surprising and incredibly moving. Tears were shed!