The best Christmas books for older children

National treasure: one of Quentin Blake’s illustrations for John Yeoman’s Magical Tales collection
10 April 2012

The truth of the dictum usually attributed to Chesterton, that when people stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing but in everything, is borne out quite as well in children's books as anywhere else. There are, of course, self-consciously secularist authors about — heavy going, mostly — but they're outnumbered by the writers who have not only embraced the supernatural but entire, rather outré, cosmologies.

The contemporary cult of vampires (patron, Stephenie Meyer) is an interesting aspect of the phenomenon; ditto, the current obsession with angels. And a novel that usefully combines both categories is Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Angels (Walker, £9.99). It's got everything: set in Victorian London but with a usefully American heroine — feisty and attractive, natch; it features the Nephilim, a category of quasi-angelic beings (remember Genesis, about there being giants in the world in those days?) and some interesting vampires. And, obviously, it has sex of an irresistibly suppressed sort, as one of the Nephilim falls for the heroine but can't, for unspoken reasons, consummate his longing. Actually the human elements of the story are well told. Have to say, it's a cracking read.

By way of respite from the downright anachronistic elements of most historic fiction of this kind, there's an enjoyable compilation of the real stuff in Dracula's Guest (ed. Michael Sims, Bloomsbury, £18.99), a collection of Victorian vampire stories and tales of the supernatural, including Alexei Tolstoy and MR James. Better prose, then, than most contemporary horror stories.

There's another instalment in Chris Bradford's brilliant Young Samurai series, The Ring of Earth (Puffin, £6.99). There's a Harry Potterish element to these stories about Jack Fletcher, an English boy shipwrecked in 17th-century Japan and trained as a samurai: the first books were, as with HP, boarding school stories at heart, with martial arts classes in place of magic lessons and exotic ordeals thrown in. Now Jack, on the run from the samurai, finds himself among his old enemies, the ninja. If we're picking nits, there are lapses in style in the writing, but it's still addictive.

Salman Rushdie can't be faulted in the way of style; indeed, that playful and allusive way of writing may be precisely the problem for less advanced readers of Luka and The Fire of Life (Jonathan Cape, £12.99). It's the story of a boy who sets out with a dog called Bear and a bear called Dog to seek the Fire of Life to cure his father of a mysterious sleeping sickness. Really, it's an allegory about the power of storytelling: "Man is the Storytelling Animal and in his stories are his meaning, his identity, his lifeblood". It's one for children who are at home with merciless puns and the mythology of the ancient world — Ra is rather good — and for adults who find the author's grown-up writing hard going.

For a bit of social realism there's a wonderful novel by the Irish schoolmaster, PR Prendergast. Dancing in the Dark (O'Brien, £5.24) is about a girl coping with the death of a brother and merciless bullying at school — which would normally cause me to make for the long grass — but it's very funny, Irish in cadence, and gracefully written.

And if it's the straightforward miracles of nature you're after, the Natural History Museum has issued a fine, clear and comprehensive guide to the animal world: Animal Records, which gives you all the feats and facts you could possibly need to know (Natural History Museum, £12.99). Neil Gaiman's latest, Odd and the Frost Giants (Bloomsbury, £9.99) isn't quite in the same league as his wonderful Graveyard Book. But this lively tale about a young, crippled Viking boy who, by virtue of the usual fairytale qualities of pluck and cleverness, outwits the Frost Giant who has taken over Valhalla, is a pleasing play on the Norse myths, even if the denouement falls oddly short of expectations.

The curious thing about books for older children is that they usually miss out on pictures, and as one of Britain's best known illustrators, Shirley Hughes, remarks in her introduction to a welcome
re-publication of Bogwoppit by
Ursula Moray Williams (Jane Nissen, £7.99), "it seems a shame that they should have this visual enhancement of their stories sternly removed from them when they become fluent readers". Well, they don't miss out with her spirited drawings for this splendid little story about the marsh-dwelling Bogwoppits, who kidnap a
bad-minded aunt and hold her for ransom, demanding two thousand black beetles from her intrepid niece.

When it comes to picture books, the national treasure is, obviously, Quentin Blake, who brings a Midas touch to bear on everything he illustrates. And with his engaging drawings for John Yeoman's splendid collection of fairy stories, Magical Tales, (Pavilion children's, £10.99) — reminiscent of Andrew Lang's wonderful fairy books — we get the best of both worlds. A treat.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in