Christmas 2013: Best books of the year for young children Although the latest from The Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson, Sugarlump and the Unicorn (Macmillan, T £10.99), also has a reliably lovely read-aloud rhythm, the story of the rocking horse who tries out various lives as a racehorse and circus performer seemed a little hollow by Donaldson's high standards and lacked her usual puns and pay off. But children will love Lydia Monks's illustrations. There are whackier, wilder horsey capers in Russell Hoban's last book, the posthumously published Rosie's Magic Horse (Walker, T £11.99), scribbled to life by Quentin Blake. The duo's 1975 riotous tribute to the triumphs of "fooling around" - How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen (Walker, £11.99) - is also republished this year. The postmodern child will be tickled by The Day the Crayons Quit (Collins, £11.99) by Drew Daywalt with artwork from Oliver Jeffers, in which each colour in the packet writes to the little boy who owns them, detailing their grievances: Red is overused, Pink stresses he's not just for girls (he'd like to draw more monsters), Black is bored of outlining and Yellow and Orange have fallen out over which should be used for the sun. It's funny, clever and pushes kids" creativity. David Walliams and Tony Ross's The Slightly Annoying Elephant (Collins, T £11.99) recycles and expands the joke from Judith Kerr's The Tiger Who Came to Tea when an elephant "adopted" at a zoo runs amok in a little boy's home. Part of the joke of Rebecca Cobb's naughty Aunt Amelia (Macmillan, T £10.99) is that nobody even mentions the fact that its heroine is a crocodile. In Little Mouse's Big Book of Beasts (Macmillan, T £10.99) Emily Gravett larks around with the idea of a bestiary, accessorising her "weak" mouse with claws and fangs. I loved Peter Brown's striking Mr Tiger Goes Wild (Macmillan, T £10.99) which encourages children to find their individuality. Animal lovers Michael Morpurgo and Helen Stephens have produced a tender tale in Jo-Jo the Melon Donkey (Egmont, T £6.99). And children who need to accept their limitations will learn a lot from the deliciously explosive tale of Boris the Boastful Frog (Hog's Back, T £6.99) by Karen Hodgson and Steve Cox. There are some truly beautiful reworkings of the classics for older children who still enjoy illustrations. Michael Rosen and Talleen Hacikyan have produced a lovely Aesop's Fables (Tradewind, £10.99) for ages six and up. Emma Chichester Clark has zestily retold Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking-Glass (Collins, T £11.99) and Robert Ingpen has created some soft, dreamy pictures of Kipling's Just So Stories (Templar, T £14.99). For children aged eight and up there's an amazing new series from Pushkin Books in which literary, adult authors retell classics (with terrific illustrations) for a younger generation: it includes Ali Smith's lively reawakening of Antigone and Dave Eggers's crisply gung-ho Captain Nemo (both Pushkin, T £12.99). Good, original illustrated fiction for children of the same age include the thrilling and mysterious Fog Island by Tomi Ungerer (Phaidon, T £10.95), Jackie Morris's extended, 21st-century version of the Norwegian fairy tale East of the Sun, West of the Moon and Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham's Mysterious Traveller (both Walker, T £11.99) in which a desert guide is interrupted from his prayers when he catches sight of a scrap of richly embroidered cloth snared on the fence of his goat pen - it leads him to a baby. This year's best stockingfillers for early readers (five to eight) can be found in the chunky Little Gems series (launched last year with two stories from Julia Donaldson) now featuring a moggy tale called Snug by Morpurgo, the rather magical The First Third Wish by Ian Beck and barmy babysitting tale My Friend's a Gris-Kwok by Malorie Blackman (all Barrington Stoke, T £5.99). There's also a distinctive new paperback of Ted Hughes's 1968 fable The Iron Man (Faber, T £5.99) featuring Andrew Davidson's strong woodcuts. Topping the bestseller charts this autumn, Walliams is emerging as the heir to Roald Dahl - all giggles and grotesquery. His Demon Dentist (Collins, T £11.99) with gruesome illustrations by Tony Ross is certain to keep the eight to 12s squealing - and brushing! Philip Ardagh's Grunts are the 21st-century Twits and his wonderful wordplay is as fabulous as ever in The Grunts all at Sea (Nosy Crow, T £8.99). Mackenzie Crook's The Lost Journals of Benjamin Tooth (Scientist, Botanist, genius, age 11) (Faber, T £9.99) is an extremely funny prequel to his Windvale Sprites series and revels in its self-important author's plummy, 18th-century language. The latest instalment from Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck (Puffin, T £11.99) continues to win over reluctant readers. The eighth book in the series sees Greg becoming a child version of the Diceman when he finds a magic eight ball. Kate DiCamillo gives young readers an endearingly world-weary heroine in Flora Buckman, who (like Gaiman) loves the comic books of which her novelist mother disapproves. In the smart, zippy blend of text and graphic novel that is Flora & Ulysses (Walker, T £10.99) she gets sucked into an incredible adventure when a vacuum cleaner gives a poetically minded local squirrel superpowers. And finally, to Gaiman's latest "very silly" book: Fortunately the Milk... (Bloomsbury, T £10.99) in which an intrepid father nips out for milk and encounters dinosaurs and "Wumpires" (wonderfully imagined by illustrator Chris Riddell). It's the perfect, madcap story to wrap up for 10-year-olds this Christmas. Seek it out for them.