Christmas 2012: children's books of the year

From friendly yetis and put-upon ghosts to a mouse with a festive quandary, Lorna Bradbury celebrates a remarkably strong year in stories for youngsters.

From The Empty Stocking by Richard Curtis and Rebecca Cobb.
From The Empty Stocking by Richard Curtis and Rebecca Cobb. Credit: Photo: Rebecca Cobb

It’s been a strong year for children’s books, with new titles from all the big names – except J K Rowling, who set her sights, with more mixed results, on the adult market – and some exciting offerings from left field, too.

At the youngest end of the spectrum, Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s latest picture book collaboration, Superworm (Alison Green, £10.99), finds them at their silliest best. Though they can sometimes feel like an act that’s hit autopilot, this tale of a superhero worm rescued from the clutches of a dastardly crow is up there with their finest rhyming classics.

The same is true of Emily Gravett’s Again! (Macmillan, £6.99), an inventive play on the classic bedtime shriek, and more endlessly readable than her newer title, Matilda’s Cat (Macmillan, £10.99), which runs the risk of being too sophisticated for its target audience of two and three year-olds. Oliver Jeffers’s This Moose Belongs to Me (HarperCollins, £11.99), a quirky story about a boy and his moose, works well for slightly older children; in a twist reminiscent of Judith Kerr’s Twinkles, Arthur and Puss, it turns out that Wilfred is also known, to the lady from the big house, as Rodrigo.

If it’s a specifically Christmas picture book you’re after, you could do worse than Richard Curtis and Rebecca Cobb’s The Empty Stocking (Puffin, £6.99), which has the added appeal of a starring role for Father Christmas (known throughout, slightly gratingly, as Santa). It’s a feel-good Christmas Eve story, as you might expect from the director of Love, Actually, featuring twin girls – one well behaved and one very naughty – a mix-up over the stockings, and a GoodBadOMeter, which allocates the presents and has a last-minute change of heart.

Still on a Christmas theme, but for six or seven year-olds to read to themselves (or to read to younger children, especially if you cherry-pick the good bits) is Philip Ardagh’s The Truth About Christmas (Macmillan, £7.99, illustrations by Marian Hill), which provides the history behind the traditions. Did you know, for example, that our tradition of dressing Father Christmas in red can be traced back to a Coca-Cola advertisement from 1931?

My favourite of the new small-format stories for beginner readers are Daren King’s Phantom Pirates (Quercus, £4.99, illustrated by David Roberts), the fourth book in his Frightfully Friendly Ghosties series, about a family of put-upon ghosts; Alex T Smith’s Claude in the Country (Hodder, £4.99), the latest instalment about the beret-wearing dog – and, an out-and-out winner this, Michael Rosen’s Fantastic Mr Dahl (Puffin, £6.99), a short Life which also acts as a nuanced introduction to the art of the biographer, showing how a subject’s sense of himself is often at odds with what others think.

For children who prefer their reading to be packed with bite-sized information, Adam Hart-Davis’s Inventions (Walker, £12.99) is a handsome large-format history, complete with tabs to pull and flaps to open, of key discoveries, from the steam locomotive to the telephone, including simple explanations of the science; and Chris Riddell’s Alienography 2 (Macmillan, £14.99) is an intricate large-scale boys’ version of his Ottoline stories, offering fantastical tips on how to rule the universe (how to beat superheroes, how to dress to be feared, how to bark orders, and so on).

The choices broaden hugely for eight year-olds and upwards. David Walliams’s Ratburger (HarperCollins, £12.99, illustrated by Tony Ross) is as silly – and rude – as ever. Marcus Sedgwick’s new series, Elf Girl and Raven Boy (books one and two, Fright Forest and Monster Mountains, are out, Orion, £6.99, illustrated by Pete Williamson), is perfect for children who like their stories other-worldly.

Michael Morpurgo’s A Medal for Leroy (HarperCollins, £12.99), another of his wartime stories with a twist, this time based on the first black Army officer, again delivers his mix of history and pets narrated by an elderly relative. And the late Eva Ibbotson’s The Abominables (Marion Lloyd, £10.99) is a beguilingly innocent story about a colony of friendly yetis, and one girl’s quest to bring them home; it should send readers back to her classics such as Journey to the River Sea.

For slightly older girls, I’d recommend Cathryn Constable’s first novel, The Wolf Princess (Chicken House, £6.99), an engrossing, deeply atmospheric story about a trio of girls whose school trip to St Petersburg turns out to be more magical than they could ever have imagined. For boys (probably), you can’t go wrong with Andrew Lane’s adventures about a teenaged Sherlock Holmes; the latest, Snake Bite (Macmillan, £12.99), sees him whisked off to late-19th-century China, investigating a series of deaths caused by a deadly snake.

Also exceptional, for eight to 10 year-olds of either sex, are Cornelia Funke’s Ghost Knight (Orion, £9.99, tr by Oliver Latsch), a ghost story that incorporates the legend of the medieval knight William Longespee; Gods and Warriors (Puffin, £12.99), the first in a new series by Michelle Paver set in the Bronze Age; and All Fall Down (Marion Lloyd, £7.99) by Sally Nicholls, a terrific story about the Black Death of 1349, from the author of Ways to Live Forever.

One area of huge growth over the past couple of years, along with apps for the iPad (about which more, left), has been the teenage market. 2012 saw the tail end of the vogue for paranormal and dystopian fiction, and I’d single out a couple of books in each field.

Darkness Falls (Indigo, £6.99), the second book by Mia James (a husband and wife team), brings the vampire story to life in Highgate Cemetery; and Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys (Scholastic, £7.99), the first in a new series, is a supernatural romance of a neo-Gothic flavour – its heroine, Blue, lives with the knowledge, disseminated by her family, that if she kisses her true love he will die. Maggot Moon (Hot Key, £10.99) by Sally Gardner is a dystopian parable narrated by a boy with dyslexia; and After the Snow (Macmillan, £12.99) by S D Crockett, written in an equally idiosyncratic first-person voice, is set in the futuristic icy wastes of the north.

For boys (and girls) who like adventure, Anthony Horowitz’s Oblivion (Walker, £16.99) stands out in a field of accomplished thrillers, following five teenagers with supernatural powers who are pitted against the evil forces of the Old Ones. (In a neat trick, it summarises the action to date so you don’t have to have read the rest of the Power of Five series to work out what’s going on.)

For girls who like historical fiction, what about Philippa Gregory’s The Changeling (Simon & Schuster, £12.99) starring a young monk and a beautiful abbess in 15th-century Italy, or the first novel by Lydia Syson, A World Between Us (Hot Key, £6.99), a love story set during the Spanish Civil War?

Finally, two oddities, ideal for children who like their stories more mythical, and good presents for many adults, too: Soonchild (Walker, £9.99, illustrated by Alexis Deacon), the final book by the late Russell Hoban, is a haunting, deeply odd story based on Inuit mythology about an Eskimo shaman whose wife is heavily pregnant with a child who won’t shift; and Philip Pullman’s radical retellings of his 50 favourite Grimm Tales (Penguin, £20) inject new pleasures to the classic form.

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