Children's books: In spite of the best efforts of writers, illustrators and publishers, fiction for readers aged between six and nine remains one of the more problematic areas in children's literature.
While many children in this age group (and indeed many beyond) will continue to enjoy being read to and while many will continue to enjoy the pleasures of picture books, many will also be starting to approach books independently and to handle texts of increasing length and complexity.
It is no surprise, therefore, that so many of the books intended for the age group should sell themselves on their blurbs as "perfect for building reading confidence" or "the perfect first steps into fiction". But, as such phrases imply, the emphasis can too easily switch from what should be literary pleasure to what becomes rather unsubtle pedagogic practice. The self-conscious repetitions, the perceived need to write within a certain limited vocabulary range, and storylines dominated by whimsy and sentimentality can lead to fiction that is predictably formulaic and, incidentally, often very poorly produced and perfunctorily illustrated.
The books selected for this review manage, to differing degrees, to avoid most of these strictures, and all of them should have an appeal for their target audience. The most original of the bunch is Tanya Landman's Flotsam and Jetsam, a beautifully structured and rather wistfully written story of what happens when the Flotsam and Jetsam of the title, assuming human characteristics, are washed ashore and ingeniously set up home on a secluded little beach. The descriptions of a shoreline existence and its abandoned bits and pieces all carry the authentic tang of the sea; they are cleverly combined with brief interpolated glimpses of a fishing expedition being undertaken by a young boy and his grandfather, totally oblivious of what is happening on the beach below their cliff path.
In its stylish format, typography, presentation and illustration, Daren King's Mouse Noses on Toast scores impressively. But with the narrative, involving a mouse called Paul, an angel Christmas tree decoration called Sandra, a shaggy sheepdog called Rowley Barker Hobbs and "a sort of monster" called a Tinby, we follow a perilous path between the precious and the downright silly: the primary focus is on the pursuit of the alleged delicacy known as mouse noses on toast. There are, however, some very funny one-liners, possibly more aimed at the knowing adult than at the less worldly child.
Anne Fine's It Moved! demonstrates how a well-crafted story, with careful attention to characterisation and dialogue, can result from the simplest of ideas. Here is a little girl called Lily who brings what would seem to be a most ordinary stone into her "show and tell" class, declaring subsequently that it has the ability to move around of its own accord. Fine catches most convincingly the atmosphere of the junior classroom and its skilfully sketched cast of pupils, teacher and dinner-lady. This is economical storytelling at its most polished and entertaining.
With the help of a magical book originally belonging to his grandfather, the likable nine-year-old Alfie Green has already exercised his benevolent capabilities in two stories by Joe O'Brien. Now comes Alfie Green and the Bee-Bottle Gang, in which the boy determines to take on the reprehensible misdemeanours of the Bee-Bottle Gang, a determination which - courtesy of a friendly Flying Broom - will take him on a hazardous journey to Honeycomb Mountain and a meeting with its monarch, the Queen Bee. It is all handled with a pleasantly light and very child-centred touch.
Imagine a landscape populated by - among others - a gnome, a windmill-cum- giant and a president called Shar Pintake and you have a flavour of Maeve Friel's Witch-in-Training: The Last Task. This may be our farewell glimpse of Jessica, the witch-in-training who has already survived seven adventures and who now embarks on a quest to find the lost shoes of one Dame Walpurga of the Blessed Warts. "There's nothing more exciting than a quest", as her mentor Miss Strega points out - and "exciting" turns out to be an understatement, as Jessica, wittily and adroitly piloted by Friel, brooms her way to graduation. It is all quite mad - but great fun.
• Robert Dunbar is a commentator on children's books and reading
• Flotsam and Jetsam by Tanya Landman, Walker, £3.99 Mouse Noses on Toast by Daren King, Faber & Faber, £9.99 It Moved! by Anne Fine, Walker, £7.99 Alfie Green and the Bee-Bottle Gang by Joe O'Brien, O'Brien, €7.95 Witch-in-Training: The Last Task by Maeve Friel, HarperCollins, £3.99
Children's Books
Robert Dunbar