Young novels: How to train dragons, avoid assassins and save the world

However wild your child is about Harry, they will miss some real treats if they spend all summer reading The Order of the Phoenix on a loop. Adventure, myth, magic and humour are bursting out all over.

I can't think of a boy - or girl - over nine who wouldn't be thrilled by Anthony Horowitz's fourth Alex Rider book, Eagle Strike (Walker £5.99). The reluctant teenage spy now has to save the world from a crazed pop-star's launch of nuclear weapons with nothing more than a cool head and his trusty bicycle, customised with an ejector seat, to help him. Part of the joy of this series is the way it sends up Bond and his gadgets with wit and utter seriousness. Despite facing down a charging bull as a matador, outwitting the ultimate computer game and saving the beautiful Sabina Pleasure from certain death on the American President's plane, the delightful Alex is as funny, brave and unspoilt as James Bond is pretentious, dim and corrupt.

Another teenager, Artemis Fowl, is busy in The Eternity Code (Viking £12.99) discovering he has a heart. Eoin Colfer's thrillers blend fairy folklore with technology so slick you feel somebody should be taking a patent out on his ideas. Once again, the teenaged master criminal is in trouble, and this time his bodyguard Butler isn't there to protect him, having taken a bullet for him. Artemis has ripped off some of the People's computer technology, and now an adult criminal has stolen it from him. With exposure of the People's existence threatened, Artemis and his nemesis Holly Flint, plus a hint of romantic interest with Butler's sexy young sister (an expert in martial arts), have to save the day. It grips like an electromagnet until the last word.

Thoughtful girls of 10+ will relish Daughter of Venice (Walker £10.99), Donna Jo Napoli's enthralling tale of Donata, a Venetian nobleman in 1592. Despite wealth and privilege, she and her sisters are denied learning and expected either to marry or enter a convent - until Donata dresses as a boy and enters the Jewish quarter. Here she finds love and learning, hope and heartbreak. Napoli writes with vigour and compassion, and the Mocenigo household is described with an affectionate eye for detail. Based on the life of real-life Venetian scholar, musician and artist Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, the novel thrums with historical detail and feminist ardour.

If you want to seek out new classics, try Eleanor Updale. Her Montmorency (Scholastic £12.99) takes two familiar elements of great children's fiction - the adult protagonist and the trickster anti-hero - to forge a deliciously witty and thrilling tale of a double life as complex as that of Jekyll and Hyde. Montmorency starts life as a Victorian cat-burglar who crashes though a glass skylight. Reconstructed by a doctor, he learns of the plans to London's new sewer system, which provide far more than the key to a quick getaway. Enriched beyond his dreams, he books into a hotel both as suave master and filthy Scarper the servant. Yet his new-found status carries with it not just wealth and stealth but moral responsibilities. Which is the real man, gentleman or thief? And how is he to manage spying for his country, too? The period details and psychological insight are woven together into a devilish debut that one hopes will have a sequel.

Chris Wooding's Poison (Scholastic £12.99) follows on his acclaimed gothic romance, The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray. Once again, the originality with which he twists conventional expectations is matched by great skill at evoking weird adventure. On a quest to discover her baby sister, stolen by the Phaeries, the heroine, Poison, must travel out of her swampy home to outwit the terrifying Bone Witch, giant spiders, assassins and kings. Lacking magical powers in a land fraught with the supernatural, the rebarbative Poison is equipped with quick wits, courage and the ability to win friends in unlikely places. Unfortunately the plot she is in becomes diverted by self-conscious explorations about whether she and the other characters are "real", which rather spoils it.

No such worries trouble the world of Helen Dunmore's 11-year-olds Katie and Zillah in The Silver Bead (Scholastic £9.99). On the cusp of adolescence, Zillah can't wait for secondary school but Katie still wants to cling to her Barbies (albeit headless). They go surfing in Cornwall, hang out with Rose, a traveller girl, and seem to be having a normal summer - until Zillah gets cancer. Dunmore brings to her children's fiction the imaginative sympathy and sinewy prose that her many adult readers enjoy. A novel about friendship, courage and change, it has no magic save that of ordinary life.

Peter Dickinson's The Tears of the Salamander (Macmillan £9.99) is an enchanting tale from the Prospero of children's fiction which will particularly appeal to budding musicians. Alfredo is the son of a baker in medieval Italy, gifted with an astounding voice and a strange pendant from his sinister uncle. When everyone in his family burns in a fire, the boy is taken to live by Sicily's volcano, which he can control with the help of the magical salamanders. But his uncle is hiding a dark secret and an evil nature that only courage and friendship can counter.

A new writer, Franny Billingsley, has come up with the most original and delightful novel I've read this year in The Folk Keeper (Bloomsbury £5.99). Corinna is an orphan girl pretending to be a boy. She has the rare gift of being able to keep The Folk, spiteful predatory beings, from harming ordinary people - but is she quite ordinary herself? Why does her hair grow two inches a night? Why is she drawn to the sea, and fresh fish? This wildly romantic and enthralling narrative keeps you in suspense to the end.

It's always hard to find good books for new readers in the six to eight range, but one gem is How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell (Hodder £4.99). My son took one look at the title and couldn't be parted from it. Not only does it have invaluable tips on dragon-training but it's a story about an unexpected hero, Hiccup, who successfully steals one of 3,000 sleeping dragons and outwits the giant Green Death just when it is about to devour the Hooligan tribe. Bulging with good jokes, funny drawings and dramatic scenes, it is absolutely wonderful. So, too, is Harry Horse's The Last Castaways (Puffin £3.99). I was delighted to see that Grandfather and Roo the dog survived their recent Arctic adventure (The Last Polar Bears), and now, aboard the good ship Unsinkable, they find themselves on an island with only a box of dog food and two packets of Snakstics to sustain them. The delicacy of the drawings is matched by an epistolary adventure of charm and wit. My daughter also commended Gwyneth Rees's Fairy Dust (Macmillan £4.99), about a lonely girl who finds chocolate-loving Snowdrop begging to be put up in her doll's house, as funny and not soppy.

Herbie Brennan's Faerie Wars (Bloomsbury £12.99) is, like Artemis Fowl, a thriller based on Irish legend, and endorsed by Eoin Colfer. A rebel faerie prince, Pyrgus, gets into trouble and is exiled to our own world where he is befriended by Henry, a boy whose parents have just announced their separation because Henry's mother is having an affair with another woman. Fantasy is interwoven with the kind of difficulty older children of 10+ respond to. A switchback of twists, steeped in magic and a smattering of physics, it starts slowly with a mundane family breakfast and escalates to a nail-biting climax in which Pyrgus is about to be burnt alive by an evil Prince of Darkness. Exciting, romantic and very clever, it has you gagging for the sequel.

Roll over, Rowling, there are other kids on the block now.