Sometimes I have to admit the reason I read children’s books with pleasure is that I’m essentially puerile —and look, that’s not a bad thing if it means getting to read The Steves by Morag Hood (Pan Macmillan, £6.99), aimed at three year olds. It’s about two puffins called Steve who keenly resent the claims of the other to be Number One Steve. It is the kind of infantile playground name-calling which makes me laugh, and I reckon young children will like it too, especially Steves.
Judith Kerr, the peerless, razor-sharp author of The Tiger Who Came to Tea as well as the tear-jerker My Henry has, alas, gone to her reward in heaven, but we still, thank God, have Shirley Hughes, whose picture books for small children are as engaging as ever. You have to share a child’s-eye view, looking from below, to draw like she does, and maybe as you get older, that gets easier. All Around Me: A First Book of Childhood (Walker, £12.99) brings together some of her earlier books for tinies, introducing counting and shapes and noises.
For older children, Angel on the Roof (Walker, £12.99) is a lovely Christmas book, about a lame, lonely boy called Lewis Brown who lives in 32 Paradise Street in Notting Hill, London. One day he sees a golden feather floating by his window and strikes up a friendship with the angel on the roof who dropped it.
It’s odd how some distinguished authors just don’t hack it when it comes to younger children’s books. Noel Streatfeild, of Ballet Shoes fame, is deservedly well known for her books for older children, but here are two written for relative tinies. The Theatre Cat and Osbert (Scholastic, £9.99
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