Holidays are an opportunity for readers. Parents have more time to read aloud, libraries have special events, and children who learn to occupy idle time with a book will never be bored. Seize the days.

0- to 4-year-olds

Mini Grey is one of the rising stars of children’s illustration. Biscuit Bear (Cape £10.99), about a boy who makes a biscuit that comes to life, is visually scrumptious, a flavoursome mixture of wit and skill. Just as colourful is Lydia Monks’s Aaaarrgghh, Spider! (Egmont £10.99), a glorious tale of a spider who aspires to be a pet, but is always met with horror. This is full of surprises, from the opening upside-down illustration to the unexpected punch line.

It would be hard to imagine a more perfect read for any 2- to 4-year-old than Shirley Hughes’s masterly Olly and Me (Walker £10.99), with its poems and snippets of stories — about trips to the park, car journeys and special occasions — that reflect a child’s experience. It is a book full of exact and humorous observation.

5- to 7-year-olds

Books about school might seem an odd read for the holidays, but the following two resonate beyond the classroom. Looking after Louis by Lesley Ely (Frances Lincoln £10.99) is a moving picturebook about an autistic schoolboy who makes a small breakthrough to which his friends and teachers respond. It helps children understand how being sensitive to others might make you, too, feel good. Colin McNaughton and Satoshi Kitamura have also produced something inspiring in Once upon an Ordinary School Day (Andersen £10.99), about a boy whose dull life is made colourful by a teacher who wakes up his imagination.

Retellings of fairy tales are ubiquitous, but Josephine Evetts-Secker’s Little Red Riding Hood (Barefoot Books £10.99) is unusually beautiful, with its poetic text and vibrant, tender illustrations by Nicoletta Ceccoli. Meanwhile, Eoin Colfer, the author of Artemis Fowl, has a book for 6- to 9-year-olds. In The Legend of Spud Murphy (Puffin £7.99) two comically characterised brothers have to spend their afternoons — horror of horrors — in the library. This is especially awful because the terrifying librarian, Mrs Murphy, is likely to shoot them with her spud gun.

8- to 10-year-olds

A Child’s Guide to Wild Flowers (Eden Project £10.99), illustrated by Charlotte Voake, is a reference book to enliven spring walks with a spirit of discovery. Classified by colour for easy identification, and sprinkled with cheerful cartoons, it opens our eyes to nature.

When the BBC ran a competition for new writers, the quirky winner was Susie Day’s Whump! (BBC £5.99), in which Bill falls 632 miles down a manhole. Pursued by a bully, he tumbles into the other worlds that comprise the earth in onion-like layers, including lands inhabited by knights and aliens, and he has narrow escapes attempting to get home. It is smart and imaginative, a real discovery.

The death this year of Joan Aiken, one of our finest children’s writers, means that Midwinter Nightingale (Cape £10.99) is our last example of her skill, and the final adventure of plucky Dido Twite. Set once again in the era of James III (an age in which plumed hats and the British Medical Journal coexist), it is a swashbuckling drama that shows that Aiken’s imagination never dimmed.

If you run out of ideas for reading over Easter and beyond, the solution is The Ultimate Book Guide edited by Daniel Hahn, Leonie Flynn and Susan Reuben (A & C Black £12.99), which contains suggestions by children’s authors, librarians, teachers and children themselves for more than 600 books for 8-12s. Invaluable.

11+

The latest work by Adèle Geras, written in 1981 but not published here until now, is Other Echoes (David Fickling £9.99), a richly atmospheric tale in which a sixth-former in the sanatorium of an English boarding school recalls a mysterious episode that happened to her 10 years earlier in north Borneo. Geras conveys the intensity of childhood experience of places with great skill, and this is a moving exploration of the way even young people need to process their past.

Alex Rider’s many fans have waited eagerly for Scorpia (Walker £5.99), Anthony Horowitz’s latest adventure of the teenage superspy. This time, Alex’s allegiance to the good guys wavers, and a plot whose ingenuity is matched only by its improbability builds to a shock ending.

Finally, Steven Herrick’s The Simple Gift (Egmont £4.99) is a remarkable work for young adults written as a series of free-verse poems. It is about a 15-year-old boy who leaves home for a hobo life, finds companionship, the consummation of first love and a home in a deserted train carriage. This is a small gem with wide appeal.

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