Robert Dunbar is a lively, leprechaun-like figure with a shock of wild grey/white hair, a middle-aged man bouncing with enthusiasm for his favourite subject - children's books.

Perhaps it's because this bookish man was starved of books when he was growing up in a remote rural part of north Antrim, and survived on a diet of Hotspur, Rover, Wizard and magazines like Picture Post until he got to grammar school - where an English teacher threw everything from Jennings school stories to P J Wodehouse and Agatha Christie at him.

His interest in studying children's literature developed when, after university, he taught English at Rainey Endowed School in Magherafelt, Co Derry.

"It struck me that if I was teaching young people, I should be interested in what they were reading."

Over time, he went back to college to do postgraduate studies in adolescent fiction, and now lectures in the Church of Ireland College of Education and teaches children's literature in TCD and in St Patrick's College of Education/ DCU. He is also, of course, the regular reviewer of children's books in The Irish Times. Finally, he was a founder member of the organisation now called Children's Books Ireland.

But although he clearly believes children's literature should be taken seriously, he has a completely unstuffy attitude to children's books himself. He was, he says, a permissive parent who let his two children, now in their 20s, read what they liked. "They emerged unscathed from all those series, and are readers." Anyway, he agrees, those series satisfy a need in children.

He hopes that extracts that he selected from some of the best Irish children's books of the last 50 years for his just-published anthology, Enchanted Journeys (O'Brien, £8.99), will send children looking for more by these authors. - The book is aimed at eight- to 12-year-olds; proudly, Dunbar points out that eight of the 17 writers are from Ulster (including people like Tom McCaughren, Eugene McCabe, and Martin Waddell). And all 17, he says, are from books that pass his children's literary merit test - which includes having a narrative that engages you from chapter one, offering striking characterisation, and having something to say about the world (without being didactic - Dunbar is not one bit fond of trendy issues-based books).

He is eager to list some of his own favourite children's books and authors: they include The Chieftain's Daughter by Sam McBratney, Siobhan Parkinson's latest book, Philippa Pierce's Tom's Midnight Garden (for nine to 12s) and Katherine Paterson's Jacob Have I Loved, first, and second, her Bridge to Terabithia (for teens). If modern Irish children have a reading problem, it's one he never had: choice.

"Beyond argument, there are loads of better books today for children than ever."