One thing which struck me immediately on surveying the books on offer for children this Christmas is the large number which are really toys, with only a minor bookish element. Walker Books have produced several of these this year. Cars by Robert Crowther (£12.99) boasts moveable pop-ups of cars ancient and modern, with realistic detail and turning wheels, from the Mini to the Bluebird, culminating in a full fold-out model of a Formula 1 racetrack. There is an informative text, but it is definitely subordinate to the models.
The same is true of Gladiators by Toby Forward, illustrated by Steve Noon, (£16.99). This includes a book about the Roman games, but the main attraction is the spectacular pop-up model of the Colosseum. Also by Walker Books and aimed at girls is Swan Lake by Jean Mahoney, illustrated by Viola Ann Seddon, (£14.99). Again there is a story booklet, but this time the reader can create her own theatre, complete with backdrops, dancers and a CD of the music.
Even the reissue of Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea (HarperCollins, £12.99) includes a china tea-set. Although all these books, produced in China, are extremely good value, it is as if publishers are losing confidence in the power of the written word alone to catch and hold the young reader’s attention. Surely the lesson of the Harry Potter phenomenon was that if a child is really gripped by a story there is no need for models or CDs, nor for abridged versions or dumbed down language.
Luckily there are still plenty of excellent writers and illustrators of the traditional book. For younger readers, My First Nursery Collection by Tony Ross (Andersen Press) is a boxed set of two well-produced books, one of nursery rhymes, the other of fairy tales, with delightful illustrations, rather in the manner of Quentin Blake. It is outstandingly good value at £14.99.
Paul Howard’s atmospheric, slightly fuzzy pictures of the Antarctic set the scene for The Penguin Who Wanted to Find Out by Jill Tomlinson (Egmont, £10.99.) In following the adventures of Otto the emperor penguin chick the reader will become familiar with the bizarre life cycle of that most long suffering of birds.
Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler have created many brilliant books for younger children, including, of course The Gruffalo. Their latest hero, Tabby McTat (Alison Green Books, £10.99) is a busker’s cat. All is well until Fred the busker is taken to hospital and Tabby McTat has to make a new life for himself with the kindly couple, Prunella and Pat, who ‘would gladly find room for a fine tabby cat’. McTat settles down to a life of ease and becomes the father of three, and when eventually he finds Fred, does not really relish the thought of a return to life on the streets. Luckily his young son, Samuel Sprat, steps into the breach: ‘Then out of the shadow sprang Samuel Sprat “Oh please let me be the busker’s cat” ’. This is an excellent book for reading aloud.
Great fun, but more difficult to read, as the words whirl round the page, following the gyrations of its heroine, is Who Wants to Be a Poodle? I Don’t by Lauren Child (Puffin, £12.99). This is the amusing and original story of Trixie Twinkle Toes, the reluctant poodle, who ‘just wasn’t a poodle sort of person’, and only wanted to step in puddles, unlike her owner, the fashionista Mademoiselle Verity Brulée, who, when not dressing the disgusted Trixie in a little pink poncho, spent her days ‘idly flicking through shoe catalogues.’ How Trixie struggled to change her image and eventually emerged as a dangerous, daring heroine will entertain the grown-up reader as well as the child of 5-7.
Also with a sense of style is the French book Constance and the Great Escape by Pierre Le Gall (Sterling, £6.99). The sinister illustrations of the enfant terrible, Constance, and her gigantic cat, Tiny, by Éric Héliot have overtones of Charles Adams. Constance’s parents are understandably keen to send her to boarding school, or prison, as she prefers to call it. The Jolly Boarding School for difficult children, with its ill-named head, Ms Joy, is unable to tame the cunning Constance, who soon wins her way home to the embrace of the monstrous Tiny.
A more agreeable pet is Alfie the deerhound, in Dear Hound, written and illustrated by Jill Murphy, creator of the Worst Witch (Puffin, £9.99.) Alfie is an endearingly neurotic and inept puppy who gets lost and has to survive in the wild, with the help of the rather more intelligent foxes, Sunset and Fixit. He has many adventures before being reunited with his owner, Charlie. I particularly enjoyed the page illustrating Deerhound Earstyles. This is a good present for children who have just learned to read ‘proper books’ for themselves, having a full-length text, but clear, well-spaced print interspersed with plenty of black and white illustrations.
Jacqueline Wilson’s popular Tracy Beaker series is set in a modern orphanage, the Dumping Ground. Her latest book, Hetty Feather, illustrated by Nick Sharratt (Doubleday, £12.99) tells the story of a Victorian orphan, abandoned by her mother as a baby and taken in by the famous Foundling Hospital in London. Hetty’s struggles with the harsh regime and her search for her mother make enjoyably harrowing reading for 8-12 year olds. If your child likes this story, a visit to the fascinating Foundling Hospital Museum in Coram Fields would be an excellent Christmas holiday outing.
The same age group will enjoy Running Wild by Michael Morpurgo, illustrated by Sarah Young (HarperCollins, £12.99.) Presumably inspired by the true story of the child who was saved from the Boxing Day tsunami by the elephant he was riding on the beach, this book takes the story much further, with Will and the elephant Oona fleeing deep into the Indonesian jungle where they have many adventures, culminating in escape from the clutches of the sinister Mister Anthony, destroyer of the rainforest and of the defenceless orangutan. Michael Morpurgo is particularly good at human/animal relationships and this is an excellent example.
He also wrote the charming little Christmas fairy tale The Best of Times, (Egmont, £4.99,) which would be a good stocking-filler for someone of 5-7. The pictures are by Emma Chichester Clark, who has also written and illustrated two excellent large-format versions of classic stories, Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Walker Books, £11.99) and Alice in Wonderland (Harper Collins, £12.99,) in which Alice looks much more like the Alice Liddell of Lewis Carroll’s photograph portraits than the Tenniel version.
A delightful story with a Christmas theme is The Lion, the Unicorn and Me by Jeanette Winterson with suitably sparkly pictures by Rosalind MacCurrach (Scholastic, £12.) This is the Christmas story seen through the eyes of the donkey, and is original and well written.
Older children who like poetry and the ancient world will relish the powerful Shapeshifters: Tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses by Adrian Mitchell with sinister but brilliant illustrations by Alan Lee (Frances Lincoln, £14.99.) Part poetry, part prose, it tells both familiar stories — Persephone, Orpheus, the Minotaur — and many less well known but just as dramatic.
Meg Rosoff, writing for teenage girls, has an original and powerful voice in The Bride’s Farewell (Penguin, £10.99,) a story set in the 19th century on Salisbury Plain. It is an uncompromising account of Pell, who flees from her home on the eve of her wedding, taking only her horse and her mute younger brother with her. Pell is what nowadays would be called a horse-whisperer, a skill which stands her in good stead in h ard times — and they certainly are hard. Was Andover workhouse really such a hell hole? It makes the Foundling Hospital of Hetty Feather look like a rest cure.
For keeping children busy over the holidays, there are two excellent cookery books, both copiously illustrated and full of appetising delicacies. The Silver Spoon for Children by Amanda Grant, illustrated by Harriet Russell (Phaidon, £12.95) is a specially good introduction to Italian recipes, while The Children’s Baking Book by Denise Smart (Dorling Kindersley, £13.99) introduces a mouth-watering array of cakes, biscuits and pastries. If you have a daughter who is vain rather than domestic, Be Beautiful by Alice Hart-Davis and Molly Hindhaugh (Walker Books, £9.99) will keep her busy for hours, experimenting with harmless hair products and make-up.
Finally, a walk down Memory Lane for lovers of Milly-Molly-Mandy, whose adventures have been reissued by Kingfisher in a facsimile edition, The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook by Joyce Lankester Brisley at £8.99. My husband loathed reading these stories to our daughters, who loved them, reserving his particular anathema for Little-Friend-Susan (or Bloody-Friend-Susan, as he preferred to call her), but others may be more tolerant.
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