Round up: The best picture books for younger readers

Almost all of my favourites this season are books of beasties, and most magnificent of them all is James Robertson’s The Book Of The Howlat (Birlinn, £12.99), majestically illustrated by Kate Leiper. A reimagining of the old Scottish allegorical treasure, The Howlat, written in the 1440s by Richard Holland, it follows an owlet who, staring at his reflection one day realises that he is “ugsome” and goes off to visit the beautiful peacock to see if he can get the matter sorted out. Robertson has rewritten the tale in Scots and English. Both are glorious, though there’s a particular pleasure in reading the Scots names of birds, the Nichtingale, the Bog-Bluter, the Mavis, the Merle, the Jay-Pyot, the Corbie, the Peeweet. A funny and powerful hymn to being “true to yer ain nature”.

Also a beauty to behold is the First Book Of Animals (Walker, £14.99) written by zoologist Nicola Davies and illustrated by Petr Horacek. This is a paean to animals big and small, from the per-whuffing of the giant blue whale to the parasitic nature of the tiny flea. So we learn there is “nothing so cute as a newt”, and the orangutan makes a nest of twigs and leaves. Horacek’s creatures are vivid, expressionistic, and anatomical.

There’s a heartening tale of discovery behind two delightful new books, Little Terry Tiddlemouse And His Countryside Friends and Little Terry Tiddlemouse: Time For Tea And Dressing Up (both Ailsa Press, £6.99). They were written decades ago by Joan Porter, an 85-year-old great grandmother now suffering from Alzheimer’s, but recently discovered by her daughter in a cupboard. Teamed with illustrations by Jessica Excell, these rhyming tales revolve around the enchanting, surreal world of some countryside animal friends. Most charming, perhaps, is Porter’s Halloween tale, in which the creatures get dressed-up, in pumpkin-mask, troll-hair, witches’ hat, and other accessories and give each other a quaint fright.

Meanwhile, Philip Ardagh and Elissa Elwick are urging children out into fresh air and big outdoors with their Little Adventurers Leafy The Pet Leaf (Walker, £11.99), a book whose message is that there’s endless fun to be had with even a simple leaf if you use your imagination. Sprat doesn’t have a pet to bring to Bring In A Pet Day, so he creates Leafy, a face drawn on a leaf, which can dance, play chase, and make a very fine guitar for a mouse.

But there’s also the Gruffalo, which is now so much a feature of nearly all children’s imaginary world it deserves its own branch on the taxonomical tree. The orange-eyed, purple-warted one is back, yet again, as The Glasgow Gruffalo, “wi’ bowfin big nashers” and a “durty big plook oan the end ae iz nose”. It’s the original Gruffalo, but hilariously “translated into Glaswegian” by Elaine C Smith (B&W, £6.99).

Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson is back too with one of the big picture books of autumn, a follow up to her clumsy-dragon classic, Zog, and again, it’s a tale of fantastic rather than real beasts. Zog And The Flying Doctors (Scholastic, £12.99) picks up where the last book left off, with the knight and former princess, now working as a team, flying round the countryside on Zog, the dragon, and helping out a unicorn, a lion, a mermaid, and, yes, the odd human being. Another comical reminder that doctoring is so much more fulfilling than princessing.

However, for those who do want a tech-revelling story with strictly no animals and a very modern princess, there’s Sleeping Beauty: A Mid-Century Fairy Tale (Pavillion, £12.99), the latest in a modern fairy story series from the dazzling illustrator David Roberts and his writer-sister Linda Roberts-Maloney. Roberts has performed his usual wizardry and transports the bewitched beauty from the 1950s a millennium on into the future, and with barely a leaf of nature in sight – except for the glorious, twisted rosebush, curling its way through the pages, enduring in the midst of all the futurescapes.