Fairytales have been plundered since Shakespeare's day, but the past 100 years have moved on to the arch bowdlerisations of Disney and Shrek. This worries me. Smothering the stuff that's so central to our imaginations in irony and knowingness doesn't help children to puzzle out their essential meanings; one of the reasons that the recent film of Neil Gaiman's Stardust was so utterly refreshing was that, like the Harry Potter series, it took fairytales seriously as the stuff of life, death and love.

Ian Beck's Tom Trueheart came perilously close to post-modern knowingness but stayed true to traditional tropes, and the sequel, Tom Trueheart in the Land of Dark Stories, is even better. Tom is the youngest and smallest of seven brothers, all of whom are called variations of “Jack”. In the previous adventure, he helped them to rescue various fairytale princesses (Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella etc.) and when the story begins, they are about to have a grand wedding, with Tom writhing in an uncomfortable satin pageboy suit. However, the villain Ormestone has other ideas and kidnaps both brides and brothers to his Land of Dark Stories. The brothers are sent off to work in his gold mines under the guard of Frankenstein's monster, and the brides are subject to harassment from the love-struck Rumplestiltskin.

Tom, meanwhile, has been shrunk into Tom Thumb and has to find a way to rescue everyone despite his diminutive size. Luckily, he has had the wit to bring his father's special sword and a piece of gold, so when his friend Jollity the crow gives him a lift he has the right weapons on his side.

Beck's work has always enchanted younger children and his drawings of mop-haired heroes capture the captivating, carefree nature of 5 to 8-year- olds without making them twee. Here, the short, eventful chapters, lavishly illustrated with elegant silhouettes, will charm both young listeners and newly confident readers. Although I would have liked to see a princess other than Rapunzel pick up a weapon and fight back, there are plenty of jokes and cliffhangers. The Trueheart series has the same kind of thoughtfulness about storytelling that informs Cornelia Funke's Inkheart and Philip Pullman's Clockwork: when Tom makes his way to the inner chamber of Ormistone's castle he finds his “father”, writing for dear life, and resembling Ian Beck himself in his benign surprise at having a “figment of my imagination” talk back. It would make a lovely anime cartoon; meanwhile, the book is a pleasure to hold, read aloud and explore.

Diana Wynne Jones, who recently had one of her novels, Howl's Moving Castle, turned into anime by Studio Ghibli, has written a heavenly romp in The Game. As one of our greatest fantasy writers she is remarkably productive and this, like Howl, Hexwood, The Power of Three and The Magicians of Caprona, is outstanding despite a hasty resolution.

Hayley arrives at a big house in Ireland to stay with a large and confusing family of cousins. Her parents disappeared when she was a baby, and she has been living with her repressive grandparents for what seems like hundreds of years. In fact, as she discovers, it is hundreds of years - because her grandparents and cousins are players in a very special Game, where stories blend into each other, becoming progressively wilder and more dangerous.

Clever children of 8+ adore this kind of stuff, which assumes they are as nimble-witted as the hero and heroine. Wynne Jones melds ordinary life (an au pair, a newsagent, a spare key) and the magical; it is she, as much as E. Nesbit, who is the unacknowledged precursor to J.K. Rowling.

The best fairytales are those most rooted in reality, and both Beck and Wynne Jones show what can be done if you pay attention to your sources.

Tom Trueheart and the Land of Dark Stories by Ian Beck
OUP, £8.99; 400pp

The Game by Diana Wynne Jones
HarperCollins, £6.99; 224pp

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