Bad lads and Bogwoppits

Juliet Townsend selects the best of this year’s reading for toddlers through to teenagers

In these straitened times one can only be grateful for the excellent value offered by picture books for young children, which have remained at the same price for several years. Since the migration of their production to the Far East, some have become ever more elaborate, with pop-up versions accompanied by sound effects, resulting in something which is more a toy than a book. There are, however, many excellent writers and illustrators represented this Christmas.

For the youngest children, Christmas Time by Alison Jay (Templar, £10.99) with minimal text and colourful and original pictures, takes us on a seasonal journey, full of reindeer, carol singers, polar bears and snowmen. Children will enjoy finding the visual links between each page.

The tragic tale of the accidental destruction of the very last dodo egg is told in amusing verse by Kaye Umansky in Dodo doo-doo (Hodder, £10.99,) and the all too vivid illustrations by Korky Paul will appeal to any child going through the ‘I love poo’ stage.

Julia Donaldson is another author whose verse is always fun to read aloud. In Cave Baby (Macmillan, £10.99) she teams up for the first time with the illustrator Emily Gravett to produce a wonderfully dramatic account of the cave baby graffiti artist and his friends the mammoths. In Three by the Sea, the author/illustrator Mini Grey (so named because she was born in a Mini) tells the story of three friends, the Dog, the Cat and the Mouse, who live happily together in their beach hut until the arrival of a sinister stranger, the vulpine salesman for the Winds of Change Trading Company, (everything ABSOLUTELY FREE.) Soon they begin to feel discontented with their lot, until Mouse’s brush with death by drowning shows them who their true friends are.