Ages 5-9: It is hard to find good books for young readers capable of engaging with stories and novels without the intervention of parents, teachers or supportive adults. But help is at hand, writes Robert Dunbar.
At a time when it is widely accepted that children's books are reaching new heights of excellence and general interest, there remains one corner of their world relatively untouched by these exciting developments. Here is to be found the fiction written and published for those children often designated "newly independent" readers, usually aged between five and nine years, capable of engaging at varying levels with stories and novels without the intervention of parents, teachers or other supportive adults.
The problem with so much of this material is its formulaic concern with restricted vocabulary, simplified syntax, minimalist plotting, thin characterisation and low production values which manifest themselves in poor quality paper and impoverished illustration.
There is not much in this "newly independent" category to catch and maintain the reading interest of the audience for whom it is intended. Clearly, writing for this age group in a manner which manages to be neither inaccessible nor condescending is a highly specialised art.
The kind of art in question is immediately evident in a book such as Allan Ahlberg's The Cat Who Got Carried Away (Walker, £9.99), where the tone and style of the latest story of the Gaskitt family and their eccentric goings-on are brilliantly matched in Katharine McEwen's harum-scarum illustrations. The frequent interpolation of the authorial voice nudges the reader into an ever widening, and ever more humorous series of discoveries before, in the concluding chapters, all mysteries are solved - or nearly so.
This is fiction which plays with readers and demands that they play with it.
As the opening sentence of Sandra Saer's The Giant and the Mouse (SMH Books, £9.95) reminds us, it may not be easy to "imagine a giant and a mouse living together" - but once we have suspended our disbelief we should soon find ourselves absorbed in a gentle fable about the gentlest of giants and the mouse who shares his kneesock-shaped home. Watch out especially for Uncle Seamus, "the wild one in the giant's family", and for the richly detailed full colour illustrations by Martin Hargreaves.
"Gentle fable" might also serve as brief description for Dick King-Smith's Clever Lollipop (Walker, £8.99), where the author's skill in drawing on the animal world as a basis for entertaining (and occasionally quite earthy) story-telling is once again in evidence. The fates of kings, queens, princesses, conjurors and pigs are convincingly linked in traditional fairy tale idiom, while Jill Barton's black and white illustrations provide their own amusing commentary.
Now reissued some 10 years after its first appearance, Gillian Cross's The Tree House (Oxford, £4.99) demonstrates that a simple storyline need not result in the merely trivial. Two brothers build a tree house, their mother lends a hand, their father sends regular parcels from America: it is all saved from the cosily whimsical by Cross's ability to give psychological depth to her quartet of characters and by her sense of seasonal change and growth.
Although it is one in a series described by its publishers as "Shock Shop", Adele Geras's Goodbye, Tommy Blue (Macmillan, £9.00) is much more elegiac than spooky. Here is a splendidly atmospheric ghost story for beginners, involving a young girl's discovery of a ghost boy in the house to which she has just moved and her subsequent understanding of his connection with the old lady living next door. Beautifully paced and structured, this is a thoughtful narrative which treats of memory, loss and acceptance.
With Megan McDonald's Judy Moody Predicts the Future (Walker, £3.99), we return to more light-hearted matters, in a very American story of feisty girlish exuberance. Judy, her family and her schoolfriends positively dance across these pages in a text which celebrates the youthful imagination, not least through the author's fascination with words and the games to be played with them. It may be, as Mr Todd, the wonderfully perceptive teacher, tells his charges, that "we all play a part in creating our own futures" - but the message is here conveyed very wittily indeed.
When we leave Danny Allbright at the end of Jean Ure's Dazzling Danny (Collins, £3.99), it is not totally clear if his particular future will lie in the world of dance but it is certainly the case that he has overcome his own prejudices about it not being a proper pursuit for boys, even less for one with athletic parents. A feelgood story without any pretensions to high art or sophisticated technique, this nevertheless provides a satisfying reading experience, though not one particularly well served by Karen Donnelly's illustrations.
Finally, a warm recommendation for The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book, Bob Hartman's anthology of "world folk tales especially for reading aloud" (Lion, £7.99). Offering some 40 "tales" from a wide diversity of localities, this will serve as an excellent introduction to the full-length fictions which lie ahead for the "newly independent" reader.
Robert Dunbar lectures in English at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Rathmines, Dublin