0-5 years
Snowflakes
Cerrie Burnell / Laura Ellen Anderson
£6.99
9781407135038
It's not always a great recommendation when famous names write children's books (cough*Madonna*cough). So it's a pleasant surprise that Cbeebies presenter Burnell has achieved something special here.
It's a very gentle tale about a little girl who's taken out of her natural habitat, to live in the country with her gran. At first, she feels lost, but she comes to embrace her new circumstances and gets a whole new sense of belonging.
On one level this is a sweet, tender celebration of individuality: after all, children, like snowflakes, are all unique. But it could just as easily be used to help explain an upheaval – moving house, divorce, even bereavement – to a tiny reader. Gloriously illustrated, with a nice degree of substance in the text, it should have widespread appeal. That seasonally topical title is a nice touch too.
5-9 years
Fortunately, The Milk
Neil Gaiman / Chris Riddell
£10.99
9781408841761
Neil Gaiman's reputation as a master storyteller now extends through various age groups. For adults he's written American Gods, Neverwhere and The Ocean at the End of the Lane: for young adults, there's Coraline and The Graveyard Book, with The Wolves in the Walls and Chu's Day covering pre-school readers.
Now he's plugged the last remaining gap, for children too big for picture books and a bit too small for his creepier chapter books. Because this is an unalloyed romp, a marvellous, pacey time-tripping adventure.
It starts simply enough when Mum goes away for the weekend and their Dad goes to fetch milk. He seems to be away quite a while, and when he gets back, he explains sheepishly that he's had quite an adventure, involving pirates, volcanoes, and an eccentric stegosaurus.
It's a barrage of joyously silly, irresistible hi-jinks. The illustrations by Chris Riddell are so appealing and so plentiful that it would work just well as a read-aloud bedtime story for little ones as a chapter book for older solo readers. With Gaiman, you're guaranteed a blast, and he certainly doesn't disappoint here.
9-12 years
The Goods: Volume 1
McSweeney's
9781848775084
£16.99
Activity books tend to be only briefly diverting, fine for a long journey but destined for the recycling bin straight after. Only very few bear up to prolonged exposure.
The great Anti-Colouring Book is one, and this peculiar new assortment is another. It's tricky to categorize, but essentially it's a huge scrapbook of jokes, puzzles and daft fun styled as 'a gallimaufry of games, puzzles, comics, and other diversions'. Those diversions include drawing an invisible monster, cooking nachos with your face, and completing a maze through George Washington's wig.
This volume's actually a compendium of weekly activity columns which run in assorted newspapers in Canada and the US. The fact that it's a cut above is likely due to the quality of the contributors: McSweeney's is a publishing house run by author Dave Eggers, and for The Goods he's roped in the likes of Jon Scieszka, Brian Biggs, Lane Smith and Jon Klassen, all notable left-field American writers and illustrators.
In fact, this glorious stream of loopy invention is as likely to engage adults as children, but it'll certainly engage fizzy, creative young minds. And there's so many rich ideas here that it'll continue to fascinate long after your standard family outing.
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