AGES 10 TO 12:Mary Shine Thompson's selection is a fine blend of magic and realism
MOST 10s TO 12s relish the challenge of a tale long enough to lose themselves in. They will willingly suspend disbelief, but they expect imagined worlds to follow a discernible logic. In my lucky bag, fantasy and realism find equal favour.
My first choice is not for the fainthearted. Think howling wind, raging seas and a cliff-top inn, and enter the age-old world of Chris Priestley's Tale of Terror from the Black Ship(Bloomsbury, £10.99 ),illustrated in haunting monochrome by David Roberts. Here you'll encounter youngsters abandoned by their drunken father, and a midnight stranger with macabre sea-faring tales. Steel yourself for a bloodcurdling twist in the final pages.
The next choice, Pip: The Story of Olive, by Kim Kane (David Fickling, £12.99 ), though, set in contemporary Victoria, Australia, is infinitely scarier, and one of the best books in the bundle. While Olive's lawyer single mother neglects her shamelessly, Olive tracks down the hippy father she never knew, only to be rejected in favour of his new family.
Meanwhile, schoolgirls as treacherous as any in Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, systematically demean her. Olive finds temporary solace in inventing an alter ego, Pip, and learns to tolerate others' shortcomings, but author Kim Kane eschews a standard happy ending, and makes no concessions to Christmassy sentimentality. Definitely merits a Christmas star.
Harsh facts dominate Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's million-selling Oscar and the Lady in Pink, translated by Adriana Hunter (Atlantic, £6.99). Oscar spends his last days in a cancer ward. He accepts that. His parents and doctors, however, cannot.
On the advice of Granny Rose, the lady in pink, he writes a series of letters to God, each exploring a decade of his now impossible future. By the end, our 10-year old is a hundred. He appreciates the value of life - and of the long sleep that follows. The story doesn't avoid bathos, and Oscar's voice is too knowing, too ironic to be always plausible. Furthermore its religious message is somewhat insistent, but nonetheless the story is hilarious and refreshingly open about the taboo subject of death.
In the elegiac A Finder's Magic, by Philippa Pearce (Walker Books, £9.99), two acclaimed grandmothers collaborate: Pearce wrote the tale for her grandsons just before she died, and their other grandmother, Helen Craig, illustrated it. Delicate pencil drawings interspersed with occasional muted colour evoke an evergreen world of wonder where anything can happen. And does. A young boy, Till, is desperate when his dog disappears. Next day, he and wise old man Finder interpret mysterious clues: the brinded cat's rhyme, the heron's tale, Miss Mousy's sketch. At an unhurried pace, a wide, verdant world reminiscent of The Wind of the Willowsunfolds. This is for grandchildren everywhere.
Their grandparents will recall absent-minded Professor Branestawm's antics from their own childhood, but it's incredible that he's 75! Here he is in this collection, The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawmby Norman Hunter (The Bodley Head, £9.99) entertaining a fourth generation with hare-brained inventions and incredible adventures. Branestawm gets full marks for ideas, but his inventions take, er, unexpected turns. Old-fashioned colonels, vicars and housekeepers inhabit Branestawm's cosy, un-PC world, but his capacity to amuse hasn't diminished, and Heath Robinson's illustration does his muddled genius justice.
Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell's Barnaby Grimes: Return of the Emerald Skull(Corgi, £5.99), illustrated by Chris Riddell, is a good old-fashioned thriller that follows Barnaby, a tick-tock lad - or messenger - when he delivers a parcel to a Dickensian school where unspeakable horrors are unleashed.
The pace is breathless and Riddell's illustrations are stunning, so it's a pity Corgi skimped on poor paper. However, Barnaby already secured his fan base in previous escapades in the series.
Another schoolboy, the Freak, alias Jacob, from Brian Falkner's The Super Freak(Walker, £4.99), is guaranteed a following; a sequel is on its way. Jacob is a new boy, and friendless, and gets into aggravating scrapes, but insists he's not bad, really.
As the story unfurls, however, his reactions to the school bullies' provocation raises all kinds of ethical questions. Jacob has to learn how best to use his secret weapon, his ability to plant thoughts in people's minds that they act on. That is one important lesson for Jacob in this lively, well told tale.
One home-produced book in this batch is 17 Martin Street, by Marilyn Taylor (O'Brien Press, €9.99). It's set in war-time "Emergency" Ireland, and in it Taylor plots the growing trust between a Dublin boy, Ben, and his neighbour, young Jewish Hetty.
Taylor draws on recollections of actual residents of "Little Jerusalem" in Portobello, Dublin, deftly weaving a tale of misunderstandings, secrets, anxiety and mistaken identity. She occasionally realigns historical events, but evokes the period with carefully chosen detail.
Prejudices turn out to be groundless and differences are not necessarily threatening.
My final stocking filler is Tim Binding's powerful, haunting Sylvie and the Songman(David Fickling, £12.99), illustrated by Angela Barrett. There's a fearful symmetry between Sylvie's mundane world and a parallel one in which extraordinary powers operate. Luckily, Sylvie empathises with the animals and birds whose songs the evil Songman steals, and with young George, her wily inventor friend, she confronts him head on. Angela Barrett's delicate illustration intensifies the eerie magic. This is a classic in the making.
• Mary Shine Thompson is dean of research at St Patrick's College Drumcondra (DCU), chairwoman of Poetry Ireland and president of the Irish Society for the Study of Children's Literature