Once upon a time

Fiction for 0-3

Owl Babies by Martin Waddell Walker Books, £3.99.

PETER Benson's illustrations supply the drama for this unusual story about three little owls anxiously waiting for their mother's return from a hunting trip. Copies of the durable board book edition are still available, while Irish publisher O'Brien Press has recently acquired the copyright. Striking wall posters are available.

The Best Loved Bear by Diana Noanan, Scholastic Books, £3.99.

TIM is a happy little boy whose world is temporarily shattered when his teacher announces a Best Loved Bear competition. Tim's teddy Toby is showing all the signs of excessive love - even his nose is worn from being kissed and his fur, what's left of it, is covered in ice cream. Poor Tim is embarrassed ... Beautiful and touching and of course the best loved bear wins.

The Baby Who Wouldn't Go To Bed, text and illustrations by Helen Cooper. Doubleday, £9.99.

SOUNDS familiar? This is not a cautionary tale, however, it is instead the warmest account of that battle of wills most parents have encountered. Our hero is intent on staying awake. Mom has other ideas. But Baby drives away in his car, pursued by Mom. Everyone Baby meets along the way is too sleepy to play. But good old Mom continues tracking Baby. It has a happy ending.

Harold and the Purple Crayon, text and illustration by Crockett Johnson. Bloomsbury, £5.99.

ANOTHER resourceful infant features in this story about a baby who wants to go for a moonlit walk but discovers there is no moon. Luckily Crockett has his trusty crayon and draws a moon, as well as everything else he needs for his adventure. Magic.

Thomas the Tank Engine - the complete collection by Rev W. Awdry. Heinnernan, £30.

JUST about everything in fact absolutely everything you ever wanted to know about the tenacious little tank engine. Lively and colourful, Thomas's expressive little face often conveys more than words.

The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas. Mammouth, £4.99.

CLEVER role reversal of the original tale with the crazed pig using a variety of modern construction equipment including dynamite and pneumatic drills, to attack the peaceful wolf homesteads. Hilarious. Shades of coyote and road runner at war. It has a happy ending. Read aloud if you can stop laughing.

Fiction for 4-7

Under The Stairs by Fiona Dunbar. Red Fox, £4.50.

WEARY of being nagged every time she arrives at her Aunt Sophie's house where she is scolded for daring to move, never mind touch anything, the little girl in this wonderfully imaginative story decides to explore well away from droning adult voices. Under the stairs, among the household cleaning objects, she discovers a world of adventure and meets new friends. Just goes to show, you should never underestimate even the humblest of vacuum cleaners.

Read and Learn With Dr Seuss. HarperCollins, £9.99.

THIS is a bargain, the first three of the good doctor's classics: The Cat In the Hat, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and Dr Seuss's ABC - all of which have played their part for generations of American children. Learning made so easy, it is child's play. As deliberate as it is apparently zany, this must be where the seeds of Sesame Street were first sown. Recommended.

The Little Reindeer, text and illustrations by Michael Foreman. Anderson Press, £9.99.

A LITTLE boy unwraps an unusual Christmas present and together he and his reindeer set off across the New York sky. Nostalgia without the sentiment, other children's writers have taken the same story but Foreman dispenses with the tears. The pictures actually soar far beyond the text. The River Bank and Other Stories from The Wind In The Willows. Kenneth Grahame, illustrated by Inga Moore. Walker Books, £12.99

ALTHOUGH many are wary of abridgments - particularly in the case of The Wind In The Willows, one of the great children's classics - this charming book is based on careful abridgements of Grahame's first five chapters and offers many full page illustrations, themselves softer variations of Shepard's original watercolours. It will not replace the original book but should help draw most readers on to Grahame's classic.

Winnie in Winter by Korky Paul and Valerie Thomas. Oxford University Press, £3.99.

WINNIE the Witch is tired of winter - so is Wilbur her faithful cat. Having cast the right spell, she sits back to enjoy the summer blazing in her garden. But her frozen neighbours invade her garden and Winnie realises summer's shortcomings. Time for another spell . .. Lively, vivid and original.

The Miami Giant by Arthur Yorinks and Maurice Sendak. HarperCollins, £8.99 ANOTHER original. An explorer leaves court and sets sail for the New World. There he finds a race of dancing giants most of whom look as if they would be at home on a Miami beach. Very funny and as expected dominated by Sendak's big, bold, unmistakable art work. Sendak's classic voyage of the imagination, Where The Wild Things Are (1964) written and drawn by him, is currently available in a hardback edition, Bodley Head, £9.99.

Animals/Natural World

Living Earth (written and edited by Miranda Smith)

BALANCES basic geology and botany in relation to animal life in a formula which matches lucid text to superb photography. Beautiful and informative - as is Natural World, another eye catching book. It is difficult not to be lured by the magnificent tiger prowling on the cover. It continues circling throughout the first few pages. Good on animal behaviour and habitat (written by Steve Parker). This handsome pair is published by the firm which has turned children's educational publishing into an art. Dorling Kindersley, £20.

The Children's Animal Atlas by David Lambert. The Apple Press, £9.95.

THIS is an extremely accessible working book which places many animals in their natural environment while also teaching the reader the specific geography.

The Eye Witness Atlas of the World, Dorling Kindersley, £16.99.

ATLASES are among my favourite books. Despite its sophisticated computerised techniques, this is as friendly and accessible as one can expect from DK. It is funny, no matter how many wonderful children's books one looks at - and there are many marvellous ones on offer - it is difficult to prevent yourself buying the entire DK list, without equal for consistently high standard use of graphics and photography. These books contribute a great deal to the teaching, understanding and appreciation of natural history, science, geography and geology in a cross referenced, inter related format which should be adopted in schools.

BBC Wildlife.

ANOTHER obvious present in this category would be a year's subscription to this excellent monthly magazine. Offering a balance of international and domestic wildlife features, the range is always exciting as is the photography. At about the price of a large hardback - this is a present which prepares the way towards a life long subscription to National Geographic.

Children's Classics

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Harper Colins, £12.99.

FIRST published in 1937, this is the subversively funny adventure which eventually inspired Tolkien's dramatic saga, The Lord of the Rings.

Bilbo Baggins, the fat little domesticated hobbit, is the reluctant hero. So inspiring, I named my dog after him.

Winnie the Pooh - The Complete Collection by A.A. Milne, illustrated by E.H. Shepard. Meuthen, £30.

BORN in 1926, and long since elevated to literary immortality, the fat little honey ingesting bear and his buddies continue to delight.

The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter. Warne, £35 available at a discount price £25 at selected stores.

DON'T be fooled, these 23 Edwardian tales written between 1901-18 are not all sugar and spice. Many of them have a sharp edge and children enjoy them all the better for it. Doting godparents etc. please note, this is a book the favoured one will keep for ever.

The Puffin Treasury of Children's Stories. Penguin, £25 - available at discount £19.99.

EXTRACTS from classics ranging from The Happy Prince, to Kipling, Black Beauty, Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, The Wizard of Oz and many others. Large format, colour and contrasting illustrations provided by an impressive selection of many of the finest children's artists.

Rhymes and poetry

My Very First Mother Goose, edited by Iona Opie and illustrated by Rosemary Wells (Walker Books, £14.99).

SIXTY of the most colourful and best loved nursery rhymes are gathered in this stylish, imaginative book which should delight and entertain. Without being overly didactic about it, nursery rhymes play a vital influence in teaching speech rhythms and also introduce us to singing and poetry.

The Oxford Treasury of Classic Poems by Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart Clark. Oxford University Press, £12.99.

AN attractive selection of British poetry from Shakespeare to Kipling, the strength of this slim deceptive book announces itself on opening it to discover the beauty and variety of the illustrations.

Both The Everyman Anthology of Poetry, for Children, compiled by Gillian Avery, Everyman Library, £9.99 and The Puffin Book of Classic Verse edited by Raymond - Wilson Viking, £14.99 offer more traditional and extensive introductions to the work of many of the greatest English speaking poets and are illustrated by traditional ink drawings and woodcuts. Far more poetry than the Oxford, but both lack its lush colour. Go for Everyman and the Oxford.

Pet Care

MANY unsuspecting puppies, kittens, gerbils, hamsters, budgies, goldfish etc will find themselves this Christmas morning in the not always tender embraces of the very young - admittedly only the most adventurous will hug a goldfish or a budgie - but a book might gently make the point that a pet is not a toy.

Me and My Pet Dog - How to Be The Perfect Owner. Morley and Orbell Watts, £5.99 (there is also a cat version)

THIS adopts a Sesame Street like approach. Less colourful is Caring For Your Pet Puppies and Dogs by Dr David Sands Salamander, £2.99. This is unmistakably a teaching guide, not an entertainment, but could slide neatly into most Christmas stockings and with cat, rabbit, hamster, budgie, and goldfish titles also available, just think of all those relieved animals.

E.D.

8-11

Matilda by Roald Dahl. Illustrations by Quentin Blake. Puffin, £4.99. Also available in hardback.

SOME adults may have gone revisionist on Dahl but his small fry fans have not and following the success of the film version of his James And The Giant Peach they'll all be eager to read Matilda before seeing the movie version with Danny De Vito.

There's got to be something right with a girl who wants a book, instead of the "lovely telly with a 12 inch screen her father keeps ramming down her throat". Also available in Collins's tape collection with Peggy Mount as the dreaded headmistress Miss Trunchbull at £5.15.

The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo. Illustrations by Christian Birmingham. Collins Children's Books, £3.50.

THE latest from this wonderful writer who always offers a wider world of history, geography or something else as well as the tales he weaves. This one is about Bertie who rescues an orphaned, white lion cub from the African veld. But what happens when Bertie is packed off to an English boarding school and the lion is sold to a circus? In spired by a chance meeting with actress Virginia McKenna, champion of the Born Free Foundation she and Morpurgo are also available on a tape version of the tale.

The Fields of Home by Marita Conlon McKenna. Illustrations by Donald Teskey. The O'Brien Press, hardback £7.99.

IRISH children's books aren't included in this page because they'll have a page of their own in next Saturday's books pages but we include this because fans who've followed the fortunes of Eily, Michael and Peggy through the Famine will crave this newest one billed as the final of the trilogy though devotees will be hoping there'll be more.

The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder. Phoenix House, £14.99 but £11.99 at Waterstones where it's a recommended book this month.

IF it's as successful as Sophie's World this tale of young Elisabet Hansen's trip from Norway to Bethlehem to see the Christ child, taking in 2,000 years of history, may soon be a classic. Only pity is more space isn't given to the fiddle playing Santa Claus and other marvellous illustrations by Rosemary Wells.

Goosebumps Wailing Special by R. L. Stine. Scholastic £7 99

"I'M no Dummy. I read Goosebumps," say the stickers and thousands do. This hardback containing three stories is great value and comes complete with the weird banshee wail that goes off the minute you open the cover. More noise for Christmas morning in case you haven't enough already.

Horrible Histories: The 20th Century by Terry Deary. Scholastic, £6.99.

BILLED as history with the nasty bits left in, these are the answer for children who always want to know what the worthy tomes leave out like who shocked the world by showing her knickers. With cartoons.

Young Adult

The Tulip Touch by Anne Fine. Hamish Hamilton, hardback £10.99.

PARENTS who've carefully directed their children's reading can find it. hard when they start choosing themselves and some feel books for this age group are too full of social issues and the dilemmas of modern living. But it is tough out there and the best of this genre do help. In Fine's latest, the heroine has to cope with a disadvantaged, dysfunctional friend. Serious stuff.

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Macmillan, £3.99.

EMOTIONAL page turner about a young American girl in Euclid, Ohio, trying to unravel what's at the heart of her life: the disappearance from it of her mother.

The Complete Novels of Jane Austen. Penguin, £7.99.

WITH Darcy and Miss Bennet from the BBC Pride and Prejudice adaptation on its cover, this book contains seven novels, from Sense and Sensibility to the lesser known Lady Susan. It's a beautiful bargain and ideal for many of the young teenage girls who've got hooked thanks to Emma (a glossy book about the making of which is also available) and all the other recent Austen screen adaptations.

Hogfather by Terry Pratchet. Victor Gollancz, hardback £15.99p.

THE latest novel from the Discworld and all who inhabit it and appropriately peopled with seasonal stuff - even if not in the way the general reader might expect. This you'll find in the Science Fiction section, second home to many a teenage boy and close to Horror which is also a big draw for this age group.

Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. Scholastic, paperback £4.99.

FANTASY cum thriller with lots of relevance for today's world, this is the first story about an adolescent girl, Lyra, which is part of a trilogy. The Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Award are among the things it has notched up so far.

Michael Collins by Colm Connolly. Weidenteld and Nicholson, selling in Easons for £9.95p.

IF YOU'VE a recalcitrant secondary school student on your hands who adored Neil Jordan's movie and is now suddenly asking questions like Did Dev really get Collins bumped off?" why not capitalise on the chance to instil some other versions of Irish history. This book is filled with photographs of the Big Fellow and his world. Enterprisingly, many shops have various Collins books on sale this Christmas - but if buying for a teenager, don't blow it by getting anything too heavy.

Seasonal

Santa's Twin by Dean Koontz. Paintings by Phil Parks. Harper Collins, £9.99.

THE wonderful illustrations by Phil Parks will keep children coming back to this book. Charlotte and Emily's snow covered clapboard house, Mum and Dad out in their night clothes wondering where their girls have gone and the kind of perfect hometown streetscapes we all long for in this turbulent world. As Santa's wicked twin dreams of turning Donner and Blitzen into reindeer soup and dispensing childhood pet aversions like broccoli into stockings, Lottie and Emmy come to the rescue of hopeful children everywhere. Excellent value for such a big, beautiful hardback.

The First Christmas by Georgie Adams. Illustrations by Anna C. Leplar. Orion Children's Books, £8.99.

IF you know any children in danger of thinking that Christmas is a feast day that begins and ends in the department store, this book for four or five year olds will gently instil in their minds the age old story of Bethlehem: no room at the inn, the brighter than bright star, gold, frankincense and myrrh et al. Its charm is that it neither adds nor subtracts to the story of what Christmas is all about.

The Christmas Story: an advent book with stand up manger. Illustrations by Sheila Moxley. Text from the Gospels. Tango Books, £8.99.

WITH its rich blues and golds, this is another book marked out by the brilliance of its illustrations - many to be found under the 24 lift up flaps that little hands will love to investigate before the book turns into a fold out, stand up manger crib for Christmas Day.

Another stunningly illustrated one is The Story of Christmas by Jane Ray. Orchard Books. Incredibly good value at the Oxfam Trading shop on Dublin's South King Street where it costs £4.45.

A Fluffy Tale Storybook by Stewart Cowley. Illustrations by Susi Adams. Readers Digest Family Books, £2.99.

PERFECT for the mandatory book in the stocking on three counts: it costs next to nothing, it's a miniature and it has what small people love - something attached, in this case a furry grey mouse with red Santa Claus hat who is the real life version of the mouse in the book who gets a special job on Christmas night.

Reference

The Dorling Kindersley Children's Illustrated Enclycopaedia. £29.95 with £5 off in Hodges Figgis.

FIRST published five years ago, this has been revised and updated for 1997 and if you're only buying one children's book this year make it this one. With 3,500 colour illustrations, the best aspect of its A to Z format is the "find out more" boxes at the end of every entry which means a child who looks up the Incas ends up cross referencing to llamas, conquistadors and ultimately a six page section on South America that takes in Simon Bolivar and Che Guevara.

The Young Inline Skater by Chris Edwards. Dorlinq Kindersley, £8.99p.

WORLD champion Chris Edwards tells aficionados how to swizzle backwards and jump off a launch ramp at speed. Mind you if the giver is expected to fork out for the helmet, elbow pads, wrist guards, tool bag and other seemingly endless kit, this could be a present that constantly leads parents back to the cash till.

The X Files Confidential: the unauthorised x-philes compendium by Ted Edwards. Little Brown and Company, £9.99p.

BILLING itself as an encyclopaedia to everything in the universe of this cult, now hit, TV series. UFOs, aliens, mutants and all things paranormal, they're all there plus endless pictures of Gillian Anderson and David Duchnovny. Close by you should find all the books for Trekkies - another must have for many in this age group.

The Usborne Illustrated Dictionary, £8.99.

CHILDREN'S dictionaries are often better, like this one, in paperback as frequently they will be adding to the weight of an already heavy schoolbag. This has all the illustrations necessary for a visual generation used to having the world before them on computer screens, such as the meticulous line drawing of the Coliseum and beautiful renderings of butterflies. How they manage to fit so much in to a book that's less than 300 pages and not much bigger than a regular paperback is anyone's guess.

Audio Books

The Charles Dickens Collection. Penguin Audio Books, £20.59.

THE debate may rage about the merits and demerits of books on tape but for any secondary school student struggling with Dickens this would surely help implant in the mind the toings and froings of Scrooge, the Cratchits and so on. This beautiful looking set includes Oliver Twist, David Copper field and A Christmas Carol on 10 cassettes running for more than 14 hours, read in those inimitable RSC and Royal National Theatre voices. The kind of present many a parent might hope to inherit after it was rejected or discarded.

Usborne Language Guide. French for beginners, £11.20.

THIS tape and book set has native speakers and an English narrator and really is for total beginners. Great if you can motivate kids to while away car journeys with it on the deck. Wonderful thing is that as well as being available in German, Spanish and Italian, it's also available in Irish, Welsh and good old Latin for those willing to give them a try.

Spot's Magical Christmas by Eric Hill. Warne, £2.99.

COULD anything be worse than Santa's sleigh getting lost on Christmas Eve? The ubiquitous Spot, complete with Christmas jingles, is available on tape for 30 minutes for anyone aged two to seven. Guaranteed to stay in adults' minds indefinitely too.