Books for 8-12s

I somehow missed out on Peter Pan and the Starcatchers, the 2004 prequel to JM Barrie's famous tale of Peter, Wendy and the Lost Boys by American authors Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. It is less of a knowing homage and much more of a page-turner than last October's much-hyped sequel by Geraldine McCaughrean. It is a tribute both to it and its just-published sequel, Peter and the Shadow Thieves (Walker, £12.99), that I gobbled both substantial books up in one long evening sitting (or rather lying).

Starcatchers saw Peter and the Lost Boys transported from their Victorian orphanage to be slaves in a distant land, in Never Land: a ship that is also carrying a priceless trunk of fairy dust owned by the angelic Starcatchers. Hot in pursuit is wicked Captain Black Tache (soon to be Hook). They all wind up on a glorious island, complete with lagoon, mermaids, savages, and monstrous croc.

Shadow Thieves introduces the terrifying Shadow Thief, and finds ageless Peter flying to a Faginesque London underworld to save his ally Molly – who has an admirer called George Darling. All's well that ends well, and there's still room for at least one more episode before Molly's daughter Wendy comes on the scene. I always did wonder how Mrs Darling came to have Peter's shadow.

Will Gatti's sparky The Geek, The Greek and The Pimpernel (Orchard, £5.99) begins with a bit of standard school bullying, but the names of the bullies (the Jaco Bin gang), the school (Staleways), its headmaster (the flashy Sir Stephen Pent) and the wealthy new boy Percy Blake let you know there's more behind this tale than most. Sir Pent's devious plan to kidnap the cleverest children in Britain and employ them to get spectacular results, and the ingenious way Minou, Patroclus and Percy defeat him, could tempt kids to read Baroness Orczy.

Siobhan Dowd's The London Eye Mystery (David Fickling, £8.99) is a slow starter, but once we get used to the autistic world of its narrator, 13-year-old Ted, it becomes compulsive reading. How can his cousin Salim just disappear from a pod in the London Eye? Cue a sequence of nerve-wracking adventures following up the nine possibilities that Ted's unique mental system offers. Curious Incident it isn't, but the story is never predictable and Dodd's writing has pace and spirit.

Oxford University Press has published a facsimile of Clarke Hutton's 1945 Picture History of Britain as part of its centenary celebrations; it makes a refreshing change to read a history that is not horrible. Much less jingoistic than Our Island Story, it is as good a summary of events from Stone Age to VE Day as you could want, and its coloured lithographs a delight.

Mordecai Gerstein's The Old Country (O'Brien, £4.99) is an exquisitely written fable about war in Eastern Europe. Gisella races out in hot pursuit of Fleur, the fox who has stolen her chickens, but stares too long into her eyes and swops identity with her. She sees things differently then, but not so differently that she doesn't choose to fight to save her human family against invading troops.

"Things are harder to put together again than to take apart," mourns the victorious emperor as he looks on his mighty works of destruction and despairs. Clean, sharp phrasing, an unpredictable plot and a surprise, but very wise, ending qualify this bittersweet tale for my "books to keep" shelf.