Children love fact as well as fiction, and, like all too many adults, often feel prouder of reading and owning a biography or science book than a novel.

My absolute favourites in this field are by Dorling Kindersley. Its seemingly simple formula of laying out crisp, clear photographs against a white background, with chunks of detailed, interesting information laid out around it, simply can’t be bettered. Children love these books, and the Eyewitness series on Ancient Egypt, the Vikings, Ancient Rome, the Victorians and the Second World War (£5.99, offer £5.09) are essential for any 6 to 11-year-old studying Key Stage 2 history. Yet formulas change, and DK’s latest offerings show this for better and worse.

A City Through Time (DK, £12.99, offer £10.39) shows how a city grows from a camp by a river to a Greek colony, Roman city, medieval city and on through the dawn of the industrial age. One might have doubts as to the geographical plausibility of this, but lavish double-page spreads show delightfully detailed scenes (including “traitors’ heads on pike”, “gamblers” and “graffiti”) all carefully itemised for the 7+. What is particularly good is that the angle from which the city is viewed remains consistent, so a real sense of change is evident. Interspersed with these panoramas are more drawings of individual buildings such as a castle, a town hall and a railway station.

Dorling Kindersley’s Science e.encylopaedia, linked to Google (£25, offer £20), is similarly detailed, with luscious photographs of every aspect of science but more useful to those confident about extracting information from the web.

The really captivating book for budding scientists of 11+ is Mary and John Gribben’s Inventing the Future (Puffin, £10.99, offer £8.79). They are the authors of The Science of Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials, and are brilliant at explaining complex scientific ideas to children. This book, which is about scientists rather than science, deserves to be a bestseller. From Aristotle to Einstein, with many lesser-known names in between, the book ’s vigorous and sympathetic style conveys the social and intellectual background from which these titans sprang, as well as their discoveries. I’m not mad about the cartoon illustrations, which scream This Is All So Geeky It’s Embarrassing, but the text and the marginalia can’t be faulted. Definitely one to buy.

Beverly Birch’s lives of great scientists (Mathew Price, £4.99, offer £4.24) are given exciting titles such as The Fight Against Microbes (Pasteur), The Search for Radium (Marie Curie) and The Battle for Radio (Marconi), and have attractively atmospheric illustrations by Christian Birmingham. Although the most dramatic incident of Pasteur’s career (his discovery of the vaccine against rabies) is omitted, Birch has an unerring instinct for telling the story of difficult and complex intellectual discovery in clear, appealing language. I love these books, and hope they find their way into every classroom in the land.

Short Books has continued its forays into similar territory, with its Who Was? (£4.99, offer £4.24) series tackling such national heroes as Samuel Johnson and Emily Davidson. The biographies benefit from being written by some of the best journalists alive (including The Times’s own Andrew Billen); they are lively, graceful and consistently interesting to read. What they are not is attractive to children. Apart from their covers, they have no illustrations, and even bright kids of 11+ expect line drawings to boost their powers of concentration.

Gillian Wolfe’s Look! (Frances Lincoln, £12.99, offer £10.39), which examines body language in art, gets children of 6+ to look at details of famous paintings such as the emotion in the expression on a face, or what painted people are doing with their hands. I wish this gorgeous, glowing book were twice as long, its choice of pictures is so good and its approach so stimulating. (Those whose appetite for great art has been whetted should get hold of Lucy Micklethwait’s A Child’s Book of Art, a perennial pleasure, which takes a similar perspective.)

For older children, DK’s A Young Person’s Guide to Music (£14.99) is another must-have. It includes a breakdown of a concerto, a guide to conductors’ hand movements, photographs of young musicians playing different instruments and, best of all, a CD to show you what a bassoon or even harmony sound like. Sadly, the CD doesn’t include extracts to illustrate its history of music.

For children of 10+, Peter Ackroyd’s series, Voyages Through Time (DK, £14.99, offer £11.99) is searingly intelligent. What joy to read sentences such as, “The image of the Aztec sun god is that of a face with the tongue hanging out — the god is thirsty for human blood.” He writes with the confidence and vigour of a born storyteller, and his books on the Aztecs, (Cities of Blood) and Ancient Egypt (Kingdom of the Dead) would be irresistible if their layouts were not a total mess. Well worth getting, but only for those whose interest in history has already been roused by more ploddy books.Fact needs just as much imagination and zeal as fiction, and when a publisher gets it right, the result will be treasured.

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