Drawn in by children’s comic annuals
Whether it was Rupert Bear's reassuring Nutwood or the preteen perils of Mandy and Bunty, a Christmas comic annual would keep me engrossed for hoursI wasn't much of a comics buyer as a child, although I did succumb to Sandman graphic novels in my teens...
Force of habit
Many memorable holy men – both saintly and sinful – walk the hushed cloisters of children's fiction. Which stick in your head?I have a soft spot for fictional monastics. As a (slightly eccentric) child I often wanted to be a monk – being a lapsed...
Sob stories
Hardy's Tess, To Kill a Mockingbird, all of Steinbeck – these are the canonical works I can't complete due to the horrors incurred by blameless characters. Which are yours?Like all but the most indefatigable, Blue Steel, eye-of-the-tiger bibliophiles...
Five Children and It made over
Wilson's coming 21st century reworking may be brilliant, but the original hasn't stopped speaking to today's childrenI'm deeply torn by the news that Jacqueline Wilson has written an updated "echo" of Edith Nesbit's Five Children and It, to be publishe...
What’s in a namesake?
Can anyone else identify with my unease at seeing my own name gracing a saccharine children's book heroine?Imogen is no Olivia, but it's an increasingly fashionable name, sneaking insidiously up the "100 most popular" lists to its current spot at numbe...
Winter reads: Ludo and the Star Horse by Mary Stewart
Imogen Russell Williams kicks off a new series matching the story to the season. See below for details of how to contribute yourselfMary Stewart, enviably, is remarkable not only for elegant, addictive, suspense-filled romances but for three outstandin...
Re-styling Shakespeare for children
You won't get away with tinkering with his plays for an adult audience – but some bracing liberties are being taken for kidsThe treatment of Shakespeare in Roland Emmerrich's current flick, Anonymous, has had many a critic reaching for his poniards. ...
The enchantments of witch fiction
As well as providing supernatural thrills, these stories are also potent dramatisations of the pressure to conformBeing a witch or wizard in the Potterverse, or in many other magical landscapes, is an exciting and desirable state – special, talented,...
Blooming brilliant anthologies
The collections I loved best as a child were full of surprises, mixing the solemn with the sillyMy favourite snippet of classical trivia is the fact that the word "anthology" means "garland" or "gathered flowers" (I'm a thrilling dinner-party companion...
Mind mapping
From Philip Pullman to Jacqueline Wilson, I'm glad young adult fiction writers have not shied away from the painful and confusing subject of parental mental illnessParental mental illness, and its effect on kids who learn early that their household god...
Growing up with the Carnegie medal
As we wait to find out who's won this year, I've been enjoying looking back at some great previous winnersOf the big British children's book awards, I'm still (impartially) fond of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, but the Carnegie medal is undoub...
Alternate history lessons for children’s fiction