Picture books, poetry, re-tellings of classic tales, short stories, original fiction in all shapes and sizes - here, in alphabetical order, are Robert Dunbar'sTop 30 children's books from 2002
1. An Tóraíocht Colman Ó Raghallaigh (Cló Mhaigh Eo, €9). An Irish-language version of the tragic story of Diarmid and Gráinne is here presented as a stunning graphic novel: the design, the use of colour and the ingenious cartoon effects all contribute to an impressive re-telling. (Age group: 12)
2. Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident Eoin Colfer (Puffin, £12.99). The second outing for criminal mastermind Artemis sees him unite with former enemy Holly Short as they take on a goblin triad and embark on a search for a missing father: the humour is slick, the gadgetry mind-blowingly impressive. (10)
3. A Shame To Miss: Poetry Collections 1, 2 and 3. Ed. Anne Fine (Corgi, £5.99 each). In a year when so many poetry anthologies for children have seen gimmicky presentation triumph over content, it is a pleasure to welcome three volumes which focus on the quality of the poems themselves. Unashamedly "traditional" in their emphasis, these books cater, in turn, for "young readers", "middle readers" and "young adults"; the last is a particularly striking selection, noticeably free from the condescension which often characterises material aimed at this readership. (All ages)
4. Charles Dickens and Friends: Marcia Williams (Walker, £10.99). "Please Note, dear Reader, that within these Pages the Characters Converse in the Words which the Esteemed Mr Dickens actually Wrote," says Williams on the Contents page of her exuberant comic-strip version of five Dickens novels. Re- tellings are rarely as colourful or as witty as they are here. (8)
5. Cold Tom Sally Prue (Oxford, £6.99). Possibly the most original children's novel this year, this part fable, part allegory focuses on Tom, caught between his own "elfin" and alien "demon" worlds: where, precisely, is personal freedom to be found, and what price is to be paid for it? With its literary and folkloric echoes, this is a novel which impels the reader to confront the timeless dilemmas of identity and existence. Prue's second novel, The Devil's Toenail (Oxford, £6.99), while stylistically and thematically more conventional, is an equally telling dissection of power and its potential to corrupt. (12)
6. Coraline Neil Gaiman (Bloomsbury, £9.99). Coraline finds a door which takes her into a flat eerily similar to the one where she lives with her parents. When she meets there a sinister woman who says, "I'm your other mother", the scene is set for a marvellously creepy story of real and parallel worlds, both dominated by the resourceful, courageous heroine. (10)
7. Cow Malachy Doyle and Angelo Rinaldi (Simon & Schuster, £9.99). "You graze, you chew and you rest." In what is essentially a poem in prose, Doyle takes his readers through a cow's hot summer day, while the greens and browns of Rinaldi's larger-than-life landscape provide an appropriately pastoral setting: a really complementary blend of word and picture. (4)
8. Fake K.K. Beck (Scholastic, £7.99). One of the year's most skilfully plotted "young adult" novels, this is the story of Keith and Danny, two contrasting US teenagers, and their "cinematic road trip" in a hijacked car in search of Danny's father. There is an unexpected twist on virtually every page: the reader, as the cover promises, will indeed be "taken in" - and in more than one sense. (14)
9. Feather Boy Nicky Singer (Collins, £4.99). The story of 12-year-old Robert, a victim of bullying, is convincingly interwoven with that of the elderly Mrs Sorrell, herself an earlier victim of another kind of bullying and its tragic consequences: this is an extremely accomplished novel, where the stylistic lightness of touch in no way diminishes its sympathetic portrayal of loss and recovery. (12)
10. Fox Matthew Sweeney (Bloomsbury, £5.99). A young boy and an old homeless man come together on a city's streets, an encounter which does much to lighten their shared loneliness and to enable the boy to grow towards maturity. (8)
11. Lawlor's Revenge Mary Arrigan (Collins, £4.99). Bron, a spirited and thoroughly modern teenager, becomes involved in a time-slip adventure - sometimes very spooky - which centres on the need to redress an act of injustice first perpetrated in the Ireland of the 1850s. (12)
12. Mrs McCool and the Giant Cúchulainn Jessica Souhami (Frances Lincoln, £10.99). Hilarious text and bold, vibrant illustrations combine in a story where female brain takes on male brawn - and with some success! (4)
13. Six Storey House Geraldine McCaughrean (Hodder, £7.99). Six flats, six floors and six stories all - eventually - interweave in this highly inventive narrative, typified by rich characterisation and wise insights into humanity and its curious ways. (7)
14. Starseeker Tim Bowler (Oxford, £10.99). Inheriting his late father's musical genius and his supersensitivity to sound, 14-year-old Luke is caught up in an adventure where both these attributes have a significant role to play: this involves an encounter with an unpleasant old woman and the blind child who, she insists, is her granddaughter. This is an unusually ambitious examination of teenage search for self, putting Luke's individual quest within "the sound of the engine that drives the universe". (14)
15. Strange Boy Paul Magrs (Simon & Schuster, £7.99). The "strange boy" is 10-year-old David, growing up in the England of the 1970s and amid the various tensions of his family life. His "strangeness" manifests itself in several ways, including the indication that he is physically attracted to his older friend, John. In this detail and in others, Magrs skilfully conveys how a young boy can sense his "differences" without necessarily understanding them. (14)
16. Strawgirl Jackie Kay (Macmillan, £10.99). When her father is killed in a road accident, Molly Siobhan MacPherson, known as Maybe, becomes largely responsible for running the family's Scottish farm. She has, additionally, to cope with racist bullying at school and to outface the unscrupulous developers who threaten to take over her property. To her aid comes the magical Strawgirl, in a story which blends strong plotting, humour, compassion and sparkling (and poetic) language: and the cows are wonderful too! (10)
17. The Alchemist's Apprentice Kate Thompson (The Bodley Head, £10.99). Is it gold in the hand or gold in the spirit that ultimately matters? This is the central question here: Thompson's vivid recreation of the world of 18th-century alchemy and its picaresque practitioners is a fascinating backdrop to the story of young Jack and his eventual discovery of an answer. (10)
18. The Dark Horse Marcus Sedgwick (Orion, £7.99). The story is of a tribe called The Storn, their quiet existence in an uncertain time and unspecified place and the arrival in their lives of a child rescued from a cave of wolves. The author's clipped, spare style is the perfect medium for the expression of the strong passions which characterise this carefully crafted novel. (12)
19. The Jamie and Angus Stories Anne Fine (Walker, £8.99). A toy cow called Angus may seem a strange Christmas present for a boy called Jamie, but it is what he has long wanted. These six totally delightful short stories engagingly describe their shared adventures. (6)
20. The Love Bean Siobhán Parkinson (O'Brien, €6.95). The dreams and disappointments of young love across the ages are brilliantly caught in this witty, timely novel, moving between the Ireland of today and of 2000 years ago. (12)
21. The Shell House Linda Newbery (David Fickling Books, £10.99). Contemporary young lives and, in particular, their sexual confusions, are linked with personages and events from the days of the first World War: this is a rewarding, if complex, novel for readers sufficiently confident to confront matters of moral, theological and literary concern. (14)
22. The Sleeping Princess and Other Fairy Tales from Grimm Saviour Pirotta and Emma Chichester Clark(Orchard, £12.99). Ten of the best known Grimm tales are here retold in simple, straightforward language, matched with exquisite and atmospheric illustrations, including one superb double-page spread for each story. (All ages)
23. The Story Giant Brian Patten and Chris Riddell (Collins, £14.99). Patten draws on some 50 tales from a wide variety of cultures, engagingly placing them within a framework which brings four children (including one Liam Brogan) to the magical world of narrative that is the giant's castle: an expertly crafted and dramatically illustrated tribute to the power and universality of story. (10)
24. The Thief Lord Cornelia Funke (The Chicken House, £5.99). The misty alleys of Venice provide the setting for this engrossing story of orphans on the run, their meeting with "the thief lord" and their growing understanding of the necessary transitions between childhood and adulthood. (12)
25. The Vile Village Lemony Snicket (Egmont, £5.99). "But for the Baudelaire orphans, life seemed to be little else than bolt after unfortunate bolt from the blue. . ." As fans of the Snicket phenomenon will know, the tragedy of these "unfortunate bolts" is undercut by the narrator's wryness of tone, the self-conscious authorial interpolations and the constant need to elucidate, a word which here means to make the meaning totally clear. Seventh in "A Series of Unfortunate Events", this is as entertainingly gruesome as its predecessors. (10)
26. The Woman Who Won Things Allan Ahlberg and Katherine McEwen (Walker, £9.99). In a well-told and humorously illustrated story the lucky, good-natured Mrs Gaskitt dominates all proceedings, including a school fete where some very dodgy business has to be sorted out. (8)
27. This Little Chick John Lawrence (Walker, £10.99). Large-scale detailed pictures and a simple repetitive text - complete with a chorus which will have the youngest reader vociferously joining in - provide a vivid and fresh version of the traditional nursery rhyme: available also in Irish, as An Sicín Beag Buí (An Gúm, €8.25) (4)
28. Underwater Farmyard Carol Ann Duffy and Joel Stewart (Macmillan, £9.99). The surreal dimensions of an "underwater farmyard" are wondrously captured in the word games of Duffy's poems and in the dreamy seascapes of Stewart's pictures: this is fantasy at its most gentle and its most appealing. (6)
29. War Children Gerard Whelan (O'Brien, €6.95). The six short stories in this remarkable collection, set in 1920s Ireland, are examples of narrative at its most absorbing; they are equally striking in their non-didactic presentation of "war" and, in the Irish context, of the legacy it has brought. (10)
30. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Book? Lauren Child (Hodder, £10.99). With all sorts of typographical fun and games, this is the picture book story of Herb, who comes to experience the problems of falling, literally, into a book of fairytales: there is enough intertextual reference to keep readers (and their children) occupied well into 2003. (All ages)
Robert Dunbar lectures in English at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Rathmines, Dublin