Books for the 8-12s: a tale of bulls, beasts and bicycles

Animals, clairvoyants, fairies, princesses and bicycles feature in new fiction for this age group. It ranges from the fantastical to the grittily realistic. Take Michael Morpurgo's Toro! Toro! (Collins). Antonito is an ordinary eight-year-old in modern Malaga, but in disgrace for rudeness to his mother. Then, wanting to support the boy discreetly, his grandfather tell him a story about the 1930s, when Grandad was eight. He had a pet black bull, Paco. One day he discovered Paco's real raison d'être, but something appalling happened in his absence when he tried to run away from his father's farm. It's a poignant tale, simply told, about the horror of the Spanish Civil War and the noble cruelty of bullfighting.

Much lighter but equally original is Roddy Doyle's Rover Saves Christmas (Scholastic, £9.99). Rudolph has turned hippie and won't work, so Rover ("a business dog") steps in to pull the sleigh. Good jokes and entertaining digressions include lizards in flip-flops, the bullying Mrs Claus and the owl that Santa borrows from a "chap called Potter".

A reissue of Beastly Tales by Vikram Seth (Phoenix, £9.99) is exquisitely illustrated by Meilo So. Ten legends and composed stories are told in spiky verse: a nasty crocodile yearning for a monkey's heart for dinner, a racy new version of the Hare and the Tortoise, and a splendid story about some animals campaigning against the building of a reservoir. The line between humorous verse and doggerel is a fine one, but Seth stays on the right side.

Two other quirky books also send up well-worn conventions. Sally Gardner's large-format The Fairy Catalogue (Orion, £5.99) is full of pictures and descriptions of fairy-story items "for sale": things like Hairy Fairy Shampoo from the Rapunzel collection, spinning wheels and cauldrons. In The Kingfisher Treasury of Princess Stories edited by Fiona Waters (Kingfisher, £4.99), Lloyd Alexander's heroine in "The Cat-King's Daughter" is no traditional pretty wimp. She's feisty , assertive and determined to have her own way. But it's Margot the cat whose ingenuity saves the day.

There are some fine re-issued classics about. The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley (Faber, £4.99) was first published in 1966 as a rewrite of a 1937 book. It's is an upbeat sequel to Aladdin: now happily married, Emperor Aladdin is also a Dad. Widow Twankey is still making her presence felt. The story is a not very serious quest, but the speech verbs – riposted, snapped, shrilled, scoffed, vowed, growled – are deliciously educational.

After more than half a century, C S Lewis's Narnia books are still breeding and metamorphosing. You can now have all seven books in a single volume (Collins, £12.99). Or there are tactile new collector's editions with Pauline Baines's original illustrations, which she has now coloured (Collins, £5.99 each). For younger children comes a beautiful abridged version of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (Collins, £7.99) with superb illustrations by Christian Birmingham.

Langley's and Lewis's original readers would have puzzled over Emma Laybourn's Megamouse (Andersen Press, £4.99): a computer mouse which (sort of) comes to life. Joe and Kelly steal into Joe's clever Granpa's study to game on his computer. But his special mouse gives them rather more than they bargained for. This develops into a rollicking adventure complete with a Cruella de Vil-style villainess.

And so to a pair of novels of our time for older readers. Half a Bike by Derek Chambers (Faber, £4.99) gives us Roy, whose mother is a heavy-drinking, non-coping single parent. They've just moved and of course there's no money – but Roy desperately wants a bike. He knows a lot about bikes but, in practice, he can't even ride one. This very compelling story explores just how vulnerable such a child is to serious trouble. It also celebrates the value of real friendship.

Mick Finn is growing up in a small Scottish coastal town in Alison Prince's The Fortune Teller (Hodder, £4.99). Like Roy, he's "at risk": his hotelier mother has been widowed for six years and she's closed in on herself. Then, unwisely, she visits a fortune taller, which obsesses her with Mick's safety. His elder sister escapes the claustrophobia by moving in with her sensible but suspect boyfriend. And Mick's mother starts a new relationship. The well-observed story hinges on the agonies and anxieties of being a young teenager trying to hold tight.