Children aged between six and nine differ widely in both reading ability and emotional development. It is encouraging to see that, despite the pressure put on publishers to supply books tailored to the various levels of the primary school curriculum, books for this age range are as varied as the children.
First: books which are flagged for "reading alone". Don't Open that Box by Conor McHale (O'Brien Press, £4.33) is the latest in the O'Brien flyers series. The story concerns a cat, a chicken, a crocodile and Granny Lambert, who gets eaten very early in the plot. Brash, fast and "exciting", with cartoon illustrations which mirror the comic quality of the text, it is typical of books intended to hook reluctant readers, especially young boys.
Eric and the Green-eyed God by Barbara Mitchelhill, and Annie and the Aliens by Emily Smith, are both in the Tigers read-alone series (Andersen Press, £7.99 each in UK), whose hardback format is suitable for class libraries. In the former, Eric discovers that his mother's wedding present from his eccentric Auntie Rose is a fertility symbol, which he and his friend Wez set out to destroy. The story has plenty of humour and tension, and children probably won't even notice the clichΘd characters. Annie and the Alien, in which Annie, a feisty young lady, gets her own back on her brothers and their smug friend - who think they can have a special boys-only gang without her - is the only one of these three books in which all the characters, even the adult ones, convince. All of the books have clear print, plenty of white space and large cartoon-like illustrations on each page.
David Henry Wilson's Never Steal Wheels from a Dog (Macmillan, £9.99 in UK) is a gently humorous book about Jeremy James and his family. It is ideal for reading to young children, or for the more advanced to read themselves. The characters are well drawn and the stories based on family life (though Jeremy James's parents have my sympathy!). The crises are minor but important to a young child.
The Trouble with Animals, by the prolific Jeremy Strong (Penguin, £4.99 in UK), is a collection of three of his early books, first printed in the 1980s. The stories have not dated, and each is warm and funny, with genuine characters and a happy ending, if not always the obvious one. In the latest football novel by Chris Powling, The Multi-Million Pound Mascot (Oxford University Press, £3.99 in UK), Josh's twin sister Mo discovers she can change their local football team's luck. But this novel has a lot more to it than just magic and matches and should appeal to both boys and girls, even those who don't like football.
In Sleepovers, by Jacqueline Wilson (£3.99 in UK), Daisy, new at school, joins a group of friends dominated by stuck-up Chloe. Each girl has a sleepover on her birthday. How will Daisy cope when it's her turn and Chloe has to meet Daisy's sister with special needs? This is not one of Wilson's best books, but the issues are, as usual, dealt with sensitively and, although the repeated Enid Blytonesque descriptions of party food grates on an adult, pre-adolescent girls will no doubt lap it up.
It is a pleasure to be able to highlight an Irish book as the best of the bunch. Michelle, in Siobhβn Parkinson's Cows are Vegetarians (O'Brien Press, £4.99), sets out her stall in the first paragraph: "My name's Michelle and I'm a Dub. That means I'm from Dublin. Dublin is the capital of Ireland and it's the best and everyone else is a culchie." How Michelle copes with her culchie cousins, not to mention cows, sheep poo and the total absence of shops, is the subject of an exceedingly funny, yet warm and very "real" story. Parkinson is one of our best Irish writers, is on top form.
Margrit Cruickshank is the author of books for children and young adults