Now is the time for eggs, chicks, tricks and fun. Easter arrives early this year, and with the school holidays beginning soon it is also the time for new books.

Egg stories do not come much better than Emily Gravett's The Odd Egg (Macmillan, £10.99/offer £8.99). With her exquisitely expressive style of drawing animals, this was bound to be a winner. Children will feel for her poor Duck as he (not she) sits patiently, ingoring the sneers, waiting for an enormous green-spotted egg to hatch into an enormous and sinister surprise.

Cathy Maclennan's Chicky Chicky Chook Chook (Boxer Books, £5.99/£5.69) is pure nonsense and lovely to read aloud as its fuzzy chicks, kitten and bees discover rain for the first time. Algy Craig Hall's Fine As We Are (Boxer Books, £11.99/£10.79) looks as if it is going to be yet another nauseatingly smug book about parent-child love but turns out to be about a baby frog anxiously watching a lot of tadpoles hatch out into rivals. It's entertaining and reassuring to those in the throes of sibling jealousy, and celebrates the fecundity of spring.

Rufus Butler Seder's Gallop! (Workman, £9.99/£9.49) is an amazing blend of draughtsmanship and technology that uses “Scanimation” to make silhouettes of animals appear to move when each page is opened. It will enchant anyone from 2+.

Thomas Docherty's Little Boat (Templar, £10.99/£9.89) is about setting out on an ocean adventure, with lashings of waves, whales and wonders. The pictures are first-rate.

Two absolutely delightful adventures for 7+ are worth catching. Joan Lennon's Ice Road: The Wickit Chronicles (Andersen, £4.99/£4.74) is about a boy novice in Ely Cathedral, whose best friend, Perfect, is a stone gargoyle. This is their third adventure, as young King Arnald's wicked uncle seeks to invade the country over frozen fenlands, and it is written with humour, clarity and sympathy.

Girls of this age may fall upon Liz Kessler's story Philippa Fisher's Fairy Godsister (Orion, £9.99/£9.49) with joy. Be careful what you wish for, as you may find someone who will grant you three wishes in ten days. A funny, wise book about finding confidence and friendship.

The best book of all for this age, however, is an old one, out of print for decades and just republished by Strident. Paul Biegel's The King of the Copper Mountains (£7.99/£7.59) is about an ancient, dying king whose heart must be made to beat faster by stories. The animals trying to keep him alive while the Wonder Doctor searches for medicine to cure him. All tell him interlinked tales - some funny, some scary, all marvellous - which turn out to be connected to his own past. Alas, this edition is without the original illustrations, but it is still one of the blazing jewels of children's literature.

Zizou Corder is back from her Lionboy trilogy with a sprightly thriller, Lee Raven, Boy Thief (Puffin, £6.99/£6.64). Set in the near future, it's about a boy who steals something he didn't mean to (a book) and finds everyone after him, because inside it is every story known to man. There are good bookish jokes (a bookseller called Mr Maggs among them), and the streetwise, vulnerable voice is pitch-perfect.

Another captivating debut for 9+ is Catherine Johnson's A Nest of Vipers (Corgi, £5.99/£5.69, April), about a family of thieves in Georgian London. Mother Hopkins's “family” want to pull off one last heist for her retirement in Bath. This is one to look out for, despite an abysmal cover.

Leander Deeny's debut, Hazel's Phantasmagoria (Quercus, £9.99/£9.49) is a creepy, clever tale about a girl sent to live with her nightmare aunt and cousin, which reads like a new Lemony Snicket. Hysterical descriptions of the house “next to a barn the colour of poo” and its monstrous animal hybrids may give sensitive kids of 9+ nightmares.

Craig Simpson's novels about Finn Gunnersen, a boy caught up in the Norwegian Resistance during the Nazi invasion, are excellent for 11+. Resistance (Corgi, £5.99/£5.69) is about two brothers, whose expertise at surviving in the wintry conditions enables them to stay one step ahead of the Nazis; Dogfight (Corgi, £5.99/£5.69) is a fast-paced thriller about aerial combat that should appeal to fans of Anthony Horowitz.

No less compelling is Sally Grindley's Broken Glass (Bloomsbury, £5.99/£5.69), about two young Indian brothers whose father loses his job and his wits, leaving them beggars picking glass from rubbish dumps. Suresh and Sandeep are heroes to break your heart; this is the kind of story that demonstrates how children can be braver and more honest than adults might think.

Many of the best books published this year have already been reviewed here. I especially commend the conclusion to Carole Wilkinson's series about a Chinese slave girl and a dragon, Dragon Moon (Macmillan, £8.99/£8.54), F.E. Higgins's Gothic thriller The Bone Magician (Macmillan, £8.99/£8.54), and for unflinching realism, Siobhan Dowd's Bog Child (David Fickling, £10.99/£9.89) and Jenny Valentine's Broken Soup (HarperCollins, £5.99/£5.69).

For 11+ children, N.M. Browne's Shadow Web (Bloomsbury, £6.99/£6.64) is a beautifully written parallel worlds thriller about a girl who finds herself in another London, where contraception is banned and women are subservient to men.

Also along these lines is an exceptional debut by Alan Shea, The Amazing Mind of Alice Makin (Chicken House, £5.99/£5.69), about a girl growing up in postwar London. Her escape is her imagination - but when the things she imagines seem to become real, readers may ask whether she has discovered magic or is experiencing a nervous breakdown.

The most remarkable story of this kind is by David Almond. Illustrated by Dave McKean, The Savage (Walker, £7.99/£7.59, April) is part graphic novel, part Stig-of-the-Dump, in which a bullied child's fantasy about a wild kid living in the woods takes on a life of its own.

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