Geraldine McCaughrean has won the Carnegie Medal twice; her career spans almost forty years and encompasses more than 170 books. Her latest, Under a Fire-Red Sky (Usborne 288pp £8.99), ranks among her best. Set during the Second World War, it turns a classic scenario on its head. Four teenagers are evacuated, but decide to jump off the train and stay in south London. They all differ in background and aspirations: middle-class, studious Lawrence is a burgeoning socialist; Olive is the daughter of a fireman; Franklin wants to be a fireman; Susan is from an abusive family and likes to be known as ‘the Gremlin’. They form a tight group, wandering around Greenwich with Lawrence teaching them about its past as they attempt to find good, useful roles with the world exploding around them. McCaughrean switches perspectives effortlessly between the characters, whose adolescent hopes and fears are beautifully realised.

Overall, there is a powerful understanding of the senselessness of war and of the immense kindness ordinary people are capable of, even under stress. Each of the four children acts selflessly. Fires caused by bombing raids sweep through London and Franklin battles with the flames. A German aviator is shot down, but Olive and a local doctor care for him. Meanwhile, the Gremlin, on a scavenger hunt, saves a baby from a ruined house. The most interesting and tragic figure is Lawrence, whose obsession with building a small flying machine leads him to both glory and disaster. The teenagers’ lives are devastated, but something new can grow out of the ashes. Children aged eleven and up will enjoy this compelling and moving book, which highlights the often-neglected bravery of firefighters in the Second World War.

From fire to water: returning to the environs of Leeds, Anthony McGowan has in The Beck (Barrington Stoke 152pp £7.99) written a thoughtful study of intergenerational friendship and mankind’s relationship with the natural world. When teenager Kyle’s parents dump him on his mad grandfather, he’s annoyed: Grandad lives in a small, untidy house, has a revolting dog called Rude Word and, in a hangover from his years as an Elvis impersonator, wears a wig. He is so fond of the horrible plastic object that when it accidentally falls into the titular beck, he gives it a proper burial.

The world is changing: the inhabitants of Leeds, including Grandad’s next-door neighbours, are multiethnic, and large corporations are encroaching on the countryside. Deep in Grandad’s curmudgeonly soul there lies a seam of humanity. When it transpires that some nearby fields and woods will be cleared to make way for a warehouse, he hatches a plan to save them. The beck itself acts as a metaphor, its fluidity matching Kyle’s adolescent sense of self. McGowan’s simple but gripping plot, allied to an understanding of the trials teenage boys face, makes this a fine read, suitable for readers of eleven and up.

The sea, always an agent of change, is ever present in Zillah Bethell’s novel Vanishing Edge (Firefly 160pp £8.99). Charlie and Apricot are teenage girls stuck in Port Talbot, aching to escape. A lyrical writer, Bethell invests her characters with unusual zest and delights in neologisms: a plan, for example, is ‘egghatched’. She also imbues the world around them – from the heat and smoke of the steelworks, to run-down shops selling candles, to the waves crashing onto the sandy beaches – with wonder.

Charlie is a carer looking after elderly people. Her mother is in respite; her father’s not around. Apricot’s life is similarly constrained: following the suicide of her father, she self-harms and fantasises, dreaming of rainbows, wild horses, mermaids and jewels. One day, out surfing, she meets a boy who offers her a new life in New York. But there will be tragedy along the way.

Bethell’s prose bleeds into the surreal, reflecting the creative, chaotic minds of her characters. She is excellent at creating striking imagery: when the teens break into a big house for a party, the chandelier comes crashing down, delicate crystals scattering, in a portent of the violence to come. While Vanishing Edge skates over some of the deeper moral issues its plot throws up and characters literally get away with murder, it’s still a neon-tinged fever dream of a novel that will keep readers of fourteen and up hooked.

From the sea to the woods with Georgia Channon’s debut novel, The Curse of the Silvan Oaks (Pushkin Children’s Books 272pp £8.99), which has the feel of a classic children’s portal fantasy. When Oli’s mother gets a new job looking after Dr Rivers of Foxley Hall, she finds a mysterious box and a secret passage that leads her into a different world. Here, the descendants of Titania and Oberon are at war and the young prince, Cory, is kidnapped by the enemy. Portal fantasies empower the weak, and Oli, who’s been kicking her heels with boredom in the real world, becomes involved in a race to retrieve him and return a magic jewel to its rightful place.

Channon is adept at the nuts and bolts of fantasy, with white rooks, sentient trees and metamorphoses abounding. Particularly delightful is a herd of miniature elephants. There are Shakespearean references too: a shape-shifting, villainous servant of the wicked queen Hellebore is called Goodfellow. The characters show remarkable honour and bravery, particularly Zandor, Cory’s older brother, whose selfless actions when he himself is kidnapped display the true spirit of chivalry. There is an overarching sense of the fragility of the environment and the need for careful stewardship of it. Written in vivid and imaginative prose, The Curse of the Silvan Oaks is a fantastical treat for readers of ten and up.