Few corners of the children's bookshop or library excite more "ooohs" and "aaahs" from the adult browser than those devoted to books for the youngest "readers" of all - a grouping which can range from babies not long out of the womb to four- or five-year-olds waiting for formal schooling to begin. These are children still at the stage of being read to, requiring an older voice to interpret word and picture and to bring them alive in a process involving sharing, participation and a great deal of fun and laughter. There are wonderful opportunities here for presenting books as the best of all objects with which to play.
A carefully-selected and beautifully-designed anthology such as Stories and Fun for the Very Young (Walker, £10.99 in UK) will ensure an effortless introduction to such play. This is a real treasure chest of traditional nursery rhymes and newer stories in prose and verse, showing off the toddler-friendly skills of some of the best-known writers and illustrators who cater for this particular age group. The world we encounter here is a place of securely happy childhoods and loving relationships between old and young; toys and pets are everywhere, willing collaborators in baby's games of mischief and discovery.
Should this view of family life seem slightly idealised, there is a measure of redress in Catherine and Laurence Anholt's Big Book of Families (Walker, £9.99 in UK), where colour and fun still predominate but with a concession to the fact that "Some days are good, / Some days are bad, / Some days are neither, / Only so-so." The best feature here is the diversity of representation given, in text and illustration, to the word "family": the tone is light-hearted, the verses and drawings are witty, but the complex reality of contemporary life is cleverly (and humanely) suggested also.
With Margaret Mahy's A Summer Saturday Morning (Hamish Hamilton, £10.99 in UK) we return to undiluted fun and frolics. Few children's writers can match Mahy in her ability to exploit the exuberant possibilities of the playfulness of words, and in this rhyming story of how an intended carefree walk can become hilariously unpredictable she is on peak form: "The mud begins its guggliwugs, / Its guggliwugs, its guggliwugs." Something of Mahy's untamed spirit also informs Michael Rosen's Snore! (Collins, £9.99 in UK), where the opportunities for onomatopoeic participation are so numerous that a soundproof room is the only recommended location for its reading.
While lift-the-flap books are often little more than gimmicky tributes to the ingenuity of the paper engineer, an example such as David McKee's Elmer Plays Hide-And-Seek (Andersen Press, £6.99 in UK) shows the real potential of the genre. In his usual coat of many colours, Elmer the elephant sets out to find his hiding friend Bird, only, of course, to discover him eventually where least expected. Young children will delight in sharing Elmer's reaction as each flap is lifted and each apparent hiding place is seen to reveal yet another wonder of McKee's stylised jungle.
In Allan Ahlberg's Monkey Do! (Walker, £10.99 in UK), jungle becomes zoo, in a rhyming story of the chaos caused by an endlessly energetic young monkey when he becomes free for a day. The illustrations, by Andre Amstutz, wickedly capture the prevailing tone; the pace is hectic, the mayhem non-stop, not least in a five-page sequence in a school temporarily having to abandon itself to what can only be called monkey business. The end of the story, which sees our hero return to his cage by "silver moon and starry evening", is an exquisitely judged resolution.
Robert Dunbar's Secret Lands: The Patricia Lynch Selection will be published later this year by O'Brien Press