It's easy to call the success of publishers Dorling Kindersley a triumph of style over substance, of marketing over matter. But at this time of year, a big, bright, impressive-looking, educational-sounding children's book for well under £15 is a prospect designed to still the begrudgers.DK's new page-design technology, and the way the company has profitably filled every crevice of an expanding market niche, makes such value-for-money possible. What hope has the competition against those colourful rows of Dorling Kindersley display cases?Quite a bit, actually, if only the buyer looks before she leaps. On the evidence of the eight titles that came my way, DK is resting on its laurels, churning out strained reprises of past successes. Most of these books, I'm afraid, will look just as shiny and new next Christmas, after a year on your child's shelf.There are two exceptions. The Amazing Pull-Out Pop-Up Body in a Book, by David Hancock (£12.99 in UK), brilliant though it looks initially, will probably go the way of all pop-up books after a few openings, especially if there are younger siblings around: the child-size, cutaway body is just irresistible. And Children's Quick & Easy Cookbook, by Angela Wilkes (£10.99 in UK), though it is itself a sequel and part of a tiring genre, should pick up a few stains if you have the patience to bring it into the kitchen. The title of another sequel here, Stephen Biesty's Incredible Everything, with text by Richard Platt (£12.99 in UK), suggests DK is running out of angles for this high-detail illustrator. This one isn't a patch on his rather cool collections of cross-sections; instead, the pictures take us through production processes, from the printing of a newspaper to the building of a Saturn V rocket and the erection of a Gothic cathedral. Not a bad idea, but perhaps someone underestimated how much explanation would still be required: page after page is covered with tiny and very dull text.Your family nerd would probably prefer The World in One Day, by Robert Ash (£12.99 in UK). But be sure you're prepared for a day or two being besieged with more useless information than when he got the Guinness Book of World Records. Every single day, it seems, Crayola produces five million crayons; France fills 20 million bottles of wine; and enough human excrement is, ehm, excreted to fill the Louisiana Superdome. Which is big. Don't expect more pointed information about humanity's production and consumption; global inequalities hardly get a look-in, even in a two-page spread headed "One Day's Food". Educational? Not in my book.The Junior Chronicle of the 20th Century (£25 in UK) adds nothing to this particular shelf, apart from its occasionally strange and patronising priorities - the disappearance of Wallace and Gromit in a New York taxi is explained in better detail than the genocide in Rwanda.Children Just Like Me: Celebration!, by Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley, foreword by HRH the Duchess of Kent (£9.99 in UK) is a UNICEF tie-in and much more worthy altogether; it even gives work to a couple of young Kindersleys. The book takes us around the year and around the globe visiting children and their various festivals, most of which seem to be "bursting with vibrant colours". It's a nice enough effort, and might well be used for the odd school report.The two annotated and abridged classics are the best of this lot. A Christmas Carol, illustrated by Andrew Wheatcroft (Eyewitness Classics, £9.99 in UK), in particular, tells a familiar tale with lots of helpful information in the margins (e.g., how much is a guinea) and a whole-hearted exposition of the social context of the Dickens story. It even explains the influence of the book on the way we celebrate Christmas.Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by R.L. Stevenson, illustrated by Ian Anderson (Eyewitness Classics, £9.99 in UK), is a more qualified success. The editors choose not to explore and explain the story's sexual undertones for young readers; and, in contrast to Dickens, the less-familiar details of Stevenson's tale get a bit lost amid the marginalia. Like much of DK's output, it's all a bit busy.Harry Browne is an Irish Times staff journalist