BEST OF CHILDREN'S TAPES - SUMMER '04

Thank God for audiobooks. Long car-journeys, convalescence, cooking, dyslexia and the kind of homework that doesn’t need total concentration are all made bearable because of them. Abandon guilt: even if you only listen to these once, they are worth every penny.

Even if buying a recording is never as good as reading to a child yourself, there are many situations in which an audiobook is a blessing. Long car-journeys, convalescence, cooking, dyslexia and the kind of homework that doesn’t need total concentration are all made bearable. Having lost my voice for the indefinite future following an operation this spring, I now have another. Luckily, this summer sees a bumper crop.

The outstanding audiobook of the season, shortly to appear on our screens. “Five Children & It” by E. Nesbit (Naxos £10.99 – don’t bother with the maddening Puffin version read by Samantha Bond), is about four children and their baby brother who go on their first country holiday in two years. While digging in a gravel-pit they unearth a Psammead, or sand-fairy, hibernating since dinosaur days, who grumpily grants them a wish a day. “Why can’t you just order a nice Megatherium?” it asks. Inevitably, each wish – for beauty, riches, wings and adventure – goes wrong, and yet a wickedly funny and thrilling time is had by all, and the long-suffering maid Ellen gets a husband out of it. Nesbit perfectly understood how children could be very naughty and yet totally innocent. This recording, by Naxos, is by far and away the best I’ve ever listened to. (Those who get hooked should also buy the Cover to Cover version of The Phoenix & the Carpet, which is the second book in the trilogy – may the third not be long in coming out next!) There are no tedious moral messages except perhaps that it’s best to tell the truth, and remember to eat your dinner, but wit and magic reverberate throughout and the Edwardian music, from Naxos’s archives, is perfectly chosen. My son was so enraptured he immediately began digging up the garden searching for a Psammead: best to make sure you have a beach nearby before listening.

An altogether harsher, if no less hilarious, vision of sea-side life comes in Cressida Cowell’s How to Be a Dragon (Hodder £5.99 ). I can’t praise this wonderful adventure too highly – in fact, for my money, she’s the NEXT BIG THING in children’s literature, with How To Be a Pirate coming out later this summer. Hiccup the Useless is a nice, polite, depressed trainee in the Hooligan Viking tribe who becomes a famous Dragon Whisperer and warrior. Despatched with the other boys to get a dragon from the terrifying sea-caves, he gets one who is tiny and toothless. Hiccup is the kind of hero you fall in love with, a Viking nerd perpetually on the edge of being beaten up by boys like Snotlout. Humble, brave, bright and loyal to his friends, he attempts to train Toothless with the aid of a manual, whose sole piece of advice (“YELL AT IT”) proves ineffectual. Happily, jokes and kindness work instead - just in time, for the Hooligan tribe is about to be devoured by a fearsome dragon called The Green Death. Read with gigantic gusto by David Tennant, and featuring some shatteringly good sound-effects, this kept us all laughing on the edge of our seats for 3 ½ hours.

The latest Terry Pratchett Discworld fantasy should really be heard after The Wee Free Men, as it’s also about his redoubtable witch-in-training, Tiffany Aching. As in How to be a Dragon, the sheer cleverness with which Pratchett writes is joyously conveyed. A gripping tale in which our spirited heroine not only has to resist the invasion by a demonic spirit but the sneers of other bitchy witches in her year. The real stars, however, are the “pictsies” (not pixies), small, blue-tattooed men who like nothing better than a suicide mission or a drink, and who, fearing nothing but lawyers and policemen, dare to dress up as a “big job” in order to fly to her aid. Pratchett’s love of landscape, animals and unsnobbish kindliness shine through. Here, the dialect and strong accent might prove a bit hard for younger listeners to understand, so don’t try this on under 10s.

Jan Mark’s Stratford Boys is one of the most delightful books about Shakespeare ever written, imagining how young Will got his first break as a writer, never having written a play before. He starts off updating an old Biblical play, and then, with his two best mates, gets more and more intrigued. It’s one of those fiendishly clever books that slips a lot of History and Literature past children of 10+, while being a thoroughly entertaining romp about the highs and horrors of amateur dramatics. Martin Jarvis audibly enjoys himself as only an actor can when conveying the pitfalls of theatre, and any aspiring thesps among your kids will love it.

A very good book about very bad children, Little Darlings (Puffin £9.99) is a savagely fdunny satire about the way many children are brought up by Nannies. Three children possessing not only stiff upper lips but ferocious cunning, get sent a burglar by the AA Nanny Agency. Their appallingly rich and pompous father, who talks in business-speak, fails to notice, being in a rush to get to a smart party with Secretary Mummy (Real Mummy having mysteriously disappeared.) The little Darlings not only steal their burglar’s car, but aid and abet the crew of the SS Kleptomanic in stealing back parts of the world’s most valuable teddy-bear. Wicked practical jokes and jolly nautical music abound. Both the story and Morwenna Banks’s superb reading of it will have children of 9 + laughing like lunatics.

For older children, Eoin Colfer’s The Supernaturalists is going to be hard to beat. (Puffin £9.99) The creator of Artemis Fowl has moved onto a dystopian adventure set in the future. Our hero escapes from an orphanage where children have everything from medical products to TV shows tested on them, and where they expect to be dead by 14. He sees his best friend die, and as a result becomes a “Spotter”, someone who can see the mysterious blue creatures which settle on the wounded, apparently draining them of life. Together with some new friends, he tries to destroy the Parasites, only to make an astonishing discovery about their real nature. It’s the kind of fast-paced thriller that could only be written by someone steeped in Irish Catholicism and action movies like The Matrix, so exciting that at times you forget to breathe.