By the time they're 10 you've probably got 'em. Dog-eared paperbacks litter the bedroom floors. Maeve Friel and Vincent Banville's latest offerings come to the dinner table. Overdue library books lurk in silent masses underneath discarded overcoats.
But, thank the gods, your silent breast responds as you dig into your wallet to pay the fines: they're READERS! For once they have absorbed the magic of the activity, be it through a football magazine, a Garfield cat comic, or a Leon Garfield period comedy-drama. Now the door is opened and all the riches of the written word are a possibility. However, when they stagger bug-eyed out of the fifth re-reading of Harry Potter, what can you offer them over the summer for the, ahem, possible rainy day on holiday?
Although they show willingness to read every Goosebumps and Sabrina the Teenage Witch volume there is, a suspicion lurks that this is the literary equivalent of providing a permanent diet of chicken dippers and baked beans. What to do?
I'll divide the selection here into two categories: first, for those aged 10-13 who are still polishing their skills and like a simpler story, well told. Second, for the more sophisticated reader who is quite able - in terms of vocabulary if not total comprehension - for many adult books, certainly the classics and those penned in the dear, distant days when popular cultural success was not dependent on how shocking, how anal, how scatological and graphically sexual an author could manage to be without getting the Moral Majority out on the streets.
Margaret Mahy is a New Zealander who has written many books for children and her A Villain's Night Out (Puffin, £4.99 UK) is great fun. The hero is a boy called Formby Mackinaw, who forms an unusual literary partnership with his alter ego, needle-toothed Squidgy Moot. For a more dramatic tale, especially for animal lovers, try Panther by Martin Booth (Puffin, £3.99 UK). Very spooky. The Hairy Hands by Gene Kemp (Puffin, £4.99 UK) is another monster-type romp.
For the older and better reader, Child of the May by Theresa Tomlinson (Red Fox, £3.99 UK) is a historical tale based on offshoots of the Robin Hood legend, and a sequel to her earlier The Forestwife. My expert reader, 10 going on 11 going on 111, tells me she was a little confused at the end of the book as to exactly who was who and who owed what: otherwise the book was "packed with adventure from prologue to epilogue".
Fugitive by Catherine MacPhail (Puffin £3.99 UK) is one of the new branch of children's literature starring single mums, social problems, and a more realistic if less proscriptive view of ideals and behaviour. Jack (13) lives with his mum, Big Rose, in reasonable contentment until she starts behaving oddly and the mystery which Jack had hoped would enliven his existence becomes more of a problem than a pleasure.
Gemma, normally a hard marker raved about Morris Gleitzman's Two Weeks With the Queen (Puffin £3.99 UK), a re-release of a 1989 novel. Gleitzman is a talented writer who addresses adult themes, in this a young boy's brother dying of cancer. Whoever said kids should be protected from grisly or gruesome themes? When I was a girl (pardon me while I tune the ear-trumpet) Ruby Gillis discreetly fading away from consumption in the Anne of Green Gables books was as much as we could bear, but today such subjects are handled far more frankly. Witness the latest by Jostein Gaarder of Sophie's World fame. In Through a Glass Darkly (Phoenix House, £11.20 UK, hardback) the Norwegian writer tackles the last days of a teenage girl dying of cancer at Christmas time, and does it with simple language and clear Scandinavian attitude towards the situation. Cecilia, the girl, is visited by an angel and prepared for her transition in a manner that includes a joyous last episode on skis. For a darker American take on early teenage angst, Cynthia D. Grant has Shadow Man and Uncle Vampire in Mammoth paperback (£4.99 UK each).
The bridge between both categories, and between all children who can read fairly well, consists of the phenomenal Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling. If you haven't already given these to your reading child, do so now. So far there is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Cham- ber of Secrets (Bloomsbury £4.99 UK), and the third is eagerly awaited. A July publication date is promised and there are apparently plans for another four after that. Every child I know who has read them from around nine upwards is enthralled. Sample verdicts range from "She seems to know just what you are going to want to read even before you know yourself," to "It is as if she had looked into your heart and saw just what you felt."
Finally, thanks to Gemma and Peter Foley for their dedicated reading and penetrating comments which assisted me greatly in the preparation of this article.
Angela Long is an Irish Times journalist