Kids book club – October

0-4 years
Who's in the Forest?
Phillis Gershator / Jill McDonald
£8.99
9781846864766

If your offspring has fallen under the spell of the Ahlbergs' classic Peepo!, here's a handy next step: a board book made to the same recipe. Peer through the holes on each page and you'll meet a cavacade of woodland animals, from foxes and squirrels to bear cubs and owls, all illustrated in a vibrant, clear-cut manner. The text is unfussy and anchored in repetition, perfect for the very youngest listener. Publishers Barefoot Books have a crafts-based, ethological ethos, and like all their output this manages to feel human and home-spun, a bright cosy treat of a book.

Who's in the forest?

4-6 years
The Princess Who Had No Kingdom
Ursula Jones / Sarah Gibb
£5.99
9781846167997

There's something charmingly old-fashioned about Jones' newly-minted fairy tale, but at the same it has a smart, no-nonsense contemporary tone: Hans Christian Andersen by way of Sex and the City. Not entirely unlike Cinderella, the titular down-at-heel girl here winds up enrapturing a handsome bachelor at a royal ball. Along the way, though, she proves that she's definitely no helpless heroine. The silhouette style illustrations hark back to the work of the great children's artist Jan Pieńkowski, and lend a proper sense of magic and elegance to proceedings. Lyrical and fun, it's an engaging princess tale without the sugar and the gloop.

6-8 years
Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs: Smuggler's Bay
Giles Andreae / Russell Ayto
£6.99
9780141501321

For the average young reader it's a dream come true: pirates and dinosaurs in one fell swoop. This is the fourth adventure featuring fearless, swashbuckling schoolboy Flinn and his intrepid classmate crew. What starts out as an pleasant outing to the seaside grows spooky as Flinn and co discover a hidden secret passage.They can't help but explore, and end up face to face with their prehistoric arch enemies, led by Captain T-Rex, up to their old tricks with a scam manufacturing sausages. Sausages made of children. Ayto's artwork is an distinctive, eye-popping delight, and writer Andreae, now one of the biggest names in children's fiction, might be familiar to older readers from his work as Purple Ronnie and Edward Monkton. (Apparently he was also David Cameron's best friend at Eton, but don't let's hold that against him.) All told, this is a hoot, full of thrills, spills and daft laughs.

9-12 years
Skulduggery Pleasant: Mortal Coil
Derek Landy
£12.99
9780007325986

There's nothing remotely run-of-the-mill about Skulduggery Pleasant. Apart from being a detective, he's also a wizard - or was, before he died. Now he walks the earth as an animated skeleton, fighting a bitter war against one Nefarian Serpine, a former colleague in wizardry, and assisted by feisty 12-year-old Valkyrie Cain. This, the fifth and latest book in a planned nine-volume saga, is quite an involved tale: Valkyrie has discovered she's destined to destroy the world, Skulduggery has only recently returned from imprisonment in another dimension, and a whole host of unearthly foes are on their trail. Newcomers will quickly come up to speed, though, and what really lifts this above its fantasy ilk is a genuine sense of imagination - and a very sharp sense of humour. Merrily lobbing twisty-turny drama, pulse-pounding battles and a natty line in dialogue into the melting pot, it should certainly appeal to young admirers of Doctor Who and Harry Potter. A film version is, apparently, already on the cards.

Chorlton Bookshop
508 Wilbraham Road,
Manchester,
M21 9AW,
Tel: 0161 881 6374

The Princess Who Had No Kingdom