Children’s books
Witches, dragons and the Terrible Deev: a choice of this year’s children’s books
Highlights include boarding school antics, adventures in Persian folklore and a wealth of classic stories – including Hansel and Gretel, retold by Stephen King
Exploring the enchanted gardens of literature
Sandra Lawrence transports us to the gnarled yews of Tom’s Midnight Garden, the scent of azaleas at Manderley and the Pillow Book’s chrysanthemums glistening with dew
Letters: Nigel Farage’s biggest weakness
Bad friend Sir: Tim Shipman’s examination of Reform’s success in attracting female voters contains an important warning for Nigel Farage…
Visionary tales: Mrs Calder and the Hyena, by Marjorie Ann Watts, reviewed
Sharply drawn characters, young and old, gleefully challenge conventional judgments and form liberating new friendships in this exhilarating collection of short stories
The Lion’s Mane, the Firework and terrible jellyfish jokes: the year’s best children’s books
Contemporary authors, including Rick Riordan, Kate di Camillo, Mark Forsyth and Michael Stavaric, share shelf space with welcome reprints, including the ever-terrifying Struwwelpeter
Censors and sensitivity
The drive for inclusivity in children’s publishing
Down the rabbit hole
Don’t cancel Beatrix Potter
Anthropomorphism will be our downfall
On the smooth marble concourse by the exit doors at Heathrow Airport I met my first cleaning robot. It was…
Matter of time
Are children’s history books racist?
Moomin marvellous
Moomins do not like winter. In one of Tove Jansson’s stories, Moomin’s Winter Follies, young Moomintroll bumps his head when…
Back to the Dark Ages
She’s done it again: J.K. Rowling has written a captivating children’s book. The Christmas Pig(Little Brown, £20) is about a…
By Tove!
Tove is a biopic of the Finnish artist Tove Jansson who, most famously, created the Moomins, that gentle family of…
Animal magic
J.K. Rowling has written a book for children — and you know what? It’s a charmer. The Ickabod(Hachette, £20) was…
Peake practice
Mervyn Peake’s unsettling illustrations reveal a gentle, kindly man with the soul of a pirate, says Daisy Dunn
Escape into fantasy
The lockdown we have been enduring has at times felt drawn from the pages of a children’s book. The eerie…
Captive audience
This film contains flying children, time travel and a sand monster that lives under a beach — yet the most…
Angels and daemons: Children’s books for Christmas
Sometimes I have to admit the reason I read children’s books with pleasure is that I’m essentially puerile —and look,…
Letters: How to squash a Speaker
No special protection Sir: Rod Liddle’s joke that the election might be held on a date when Muslims cannot vote,…
Children’s literature has become horribly right-on
There was a spat the other week about a children’s book, Equal to Everything: Judge Brenda and the Supreme Court,…
Edith Nesbit — a children’s writer of genius who disinherited her own adopted offspring
‘When one writes for children,’ the novelist Jill Paton Walsh has said, ‘there are more people in the room. Writing…
A child’s-eye view of the world: The Curse of the School Rabbit, by Judith Kerr, reviewed
Is there a more perfect children’s writer for this generation than Judith Kerr? She started with a tiger — The…
Family favourites: children’s books for Christmas reviewed
There’s no shortage of magical rings in the children’s canon, the sort of things that usefully make you invisible or…
Lucy Mangan has enough comic energy to power the National Grid
After three hot-water-bottle-warmed evenings of highly satisfying bedtime reading, I can confirm that, even in a world where Francis Spufford’s…
A chance to see the Moomins’ creator for the genius she really was: Tove Janssons reviewed
Tove Jansson, according to her niece’s husband, was a squirt in size and could rarely be persuaded to eat, preferring…
The tyranny of the bedtime story
All surveys carried out by retail businesses with a view to generating press coverage should be treated with extreme caution,…
