Not always. Adults who have treasured their tattered paperbacks of childhood classics are mystified to find boys and girls rejecting these in favour of a nice, shiny Jacqueline Wilson. Children really do judge a book by its cover, and while a well-preserved hardback will keep its appeal, paperbacks, alas, do not. My son, having fiercely rejected The Jungle Book because of the old paperback copy I offered him, is now transfixed by the Templar edition of the same, which appeals thanks to outstanding new illustrations. The moral is: old wine needs new bottles.

The most valiant and least appreciated job in children’s publishing is that of an editor who keeps a back list of perennial favourites alive. Red Fox Classics, which keeps republishing Rosemary Sutcliffe, Arthur Ransome and selected E. Nesbit novels, is one such, as is the excellent HarperCollins Modern Classics, where you can find Alan Garner, P. L. Travers’s Mary Poppins, Diana Wynne-Jones and Tolkien in gorgeous new jackets. Macmillan rescued Eva Ibbotson’s deliciously funny magical adventures, OUP maintains Edward Eager’s quirky American tales and Hodder has kept Helen Cresswell and Enid Blyton available for new generations. Hurrah for them, because publishing should never just be about discovering the latest Rowling or Pullman, but also about rediscovering what was loved before them.

Yet what of those authors who have, often for obscure reasons known best to accountants at Puffin, fallen out of print? The granddaughter of Lucy M. Boston, whose ravishing and thrilling Green Knowe series about a small boy and his grandmother living in a haunted house, has just republished her work (under the Oldknow Books imprint at £4.99 each), but few enjoy such a dedicated fan base. Not every reprint is going to appeal, of course. Philip Pullman has long cited The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay as his favourite — “the funniest children’s book ever written”. It has just been reissued by The New York Review Children’s Collection (£10) and, alas, did not raise a single smile in my own family.

Two new champions of forgotten children’s fiction who seem to get it right are Jane Nissen and Young Spitfire. If you’re searching for something timelessly enchanting to give a child of 8 to 12, their lists are well worth checking out.

Nissen, a former children’s editor at Penguin, rescues and reprints about two books a year, largely as a labour of love, and has recently brought back J. B. S. Haldane’s My Friend Mr Leakey (£6.99, offer £5.94), one of the best comedies about life with a magician yet written. There is a distinct nostalgia appeal to some choices — Marigold in Godmother’s House (£6.99, offer £5.94) and Hobberdy Dick (£6.99, offer £5.94) are fondly remembered by many in their fifties, but few under it — and not all the covers are as attractive as they could be. Yet the best are among the lost treasures of childhood, and include T. H. White’s Lilliputian fantasy, Mistress Masham’s Repose (£6.99, offer £5.94), Alison Uttley’s A Country Child (£6.99, offer £5.94) and Eric Linklater’s The Wind on the Moon (£6.99, offer £5.94). All are reprinted with the original illustrations, and the sense of a gentler, kindlier world of the kind that children still yearn for is an admirable characteristic of her list.

Many of her choices would appeal more to girls, so it is good news that Elliott & Thompson has just brought out Young Spitfire paperbacks, aimed at boys. The problem with keeping boys hooked on books is not just the innate conservatism of the male sex, which leads them to stick to a handful of tried and tested favourites, but their resentment of girls appearing in their imaginary life. This is where old-fashioned stories like Richmal Crompton’s Just William series, not to mention The Jungle Book and The Hobbit, triumph. Young Spitfire has four splendid old titles on its new list: Geoffrey Trease’s rousing Robin Hood fantasy Bows Against the Barons (£6.99, offer £5.94); Leon Garfield’s John Diamond (£7.99, offer £6.79), a terrific tale of how a boy sets out to right the wrongs committed by his swindler father; Eden Phillpotts’s dreamy, Arabian Nights-style tale The White Camel (£7.99, offer £6.79); and Marjorie Bowen’s baroque historical thriller, The Viper of Milan (£9.99, offer £8.49), admired by Graham Greene and Mark Twain. Beautifully produced, each shares a muscular sense of adventure that will appeal to confident readers who can be reassured by the strictly bachelor nature of their heroes. Spitfire promises to bring back other lost books by Geoffrey Trease such as The Crown of Violet (about a boy in Ancient Greece who saves Sophocles from exile), but there are many others, especially by Peter Dickinson, John Christopher and Rider Haggard, which would also find enthusiastic readers.

What is striking about these classics is the richness of their vocabulary, something largely lacking from many modern children’s books. Just as Beatrix Potter expected young children to work out what “soporific” meant in her Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, so these classics, returned to life with their occasional flights of purple prose, blotches of racism, moral depth and utter absence of self-consciousness, have the great virtue of not condescending to children. They are unabashed stories, and on the brink of a new year they deserve to find the widest possible new band of admirers to enjoy them.

Books First: 0870 1608080

What are your own lost childhood classics? E-mail books@thetimes.co.uk (or write to Books, The Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT) and tell us.

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