The year’s best children’s books, featuring animals real and imaginary

It’s not often that my tastes are validated by Netflix, but Jonathan Stroud’s brilliant series about teenage ghost hunters, Lockwood & Co., is being turned into a series. If you haven’t read it, give it a go. The mordant talking skull alone is worth it. Stroud has already embarked on another series about a tough nut sharp-shooter, Scarlett, and her amiable sidekick, Albert Browne, who, handily, can read or sieve minds.  

The Notorious Scarlett & Browne: Being an Account of the Fearless Outlaws and their Infamous Deeds (Walker Books, £7.99) is the second in the series, and the subtitle gives the gist. Here they carry out an impossible heist, complicated by ghouls. I say this even though I take a dim view of the underlying premise – that the bogey in the Britain where it all happens is the Faith Houses, an all-encompassing religious institution with sinister operatives. It’s a rubbish notion, given that Christianity has generally made us kinder and more humane, and I have limited patience with a heroine whose way of recharging is to meditate on a prayer mat, but it’s a rattling story.