Full of quirky verse and nonsense stories, The Mysteries of Zigomar by Allan Ahlberg (Walker Books, £4.99 in UK), is likely to appeal to parents more than children, particularly those who've just been to the school Christmas play and seen their child play a tree. Still curtains fall eventually/and homeward in the car/His dad and I can then admire:/Our son, the star.
The son, the star, is likely to find that a bit soppy and prefer Ann Jungman's Dracula is Backula (Andersen Press, £7.99 in UK), where the grisly count runs out of money, finds his castle is falling down and has to work on the set of a Dracula film, as a lowly extra, to earn some more. It's fast and funny and you can colour in the black and white illustrations with lots of red blood if you like.
Oh dear, what if you were a good boy at school, like Jack Baker, and a new teacher comes to the school who gets you mixed up with the naughtiest boy, also called Jack, then where are you? Tony Bradman's The Two Jacks (Barrington Stoke, £3.99 in UK) unravels the good boy/bad boy story, and it all ends happily.
Miss Pepperpot is a sweet little lady who shrinks to the size of a pepperpot at the most inconvenient times and gets into all sorts of pickles. Hard to believe that the charming stories in First Storybook, by Alf Proysen (Hutchinson, £9.99 in UK) were written back in the 1940s.
The Oldest Winger in Town and The Oldest Stinger in Town are new instalments in the story of Mabel, Muttley, the 109-year-old primary school pupil (Bloomsbury, £3.99 each) and have lots of preposterous appeal, while a new series from O'Brien Press has lots of messy gooey detail in Katie's Cake and Danny's Smelly Toothbrush and Granny Makes a Mess (O'Brien Panda series, £3.99).