Of all magical creatures, djinns or genies seem the most fascinating, and the most dangerous. One of the greatest moments in that peerless film The Thief of Baghdad comes when the genie escapes his prison-bottle bellowing “Free, free, FREE!” Who hasn’t felt like this, getting out of school or finishing a week’s work? Incredible cosmic powers, teeny-weeny living-space: no wonder genies are less than genial.

Anyway, these spirits of air and fire are back, streaming out of new books and old in a swirl of glittering prose. The most dignified is Abdu’l Makkar, who serves a magician in My Friend Mr Leakey by J. B. S. Haldane (Jane Nissen Books, £6.99; offer £5.94).

This is one of the funniest books yet written for children, and Jane Nissen deserves a medal for reprinting it after decades of neglect, complete with Quentin Blake’s quirky drawings. The book, first published in 1937, consists of various adventures enjoyed with Mr Leakey and his genie, who acts pretty much as Jeeves to the magician’s Wooster.

There is a small, naughty dragon, a flying carpet, an octopus that was once a legless man and a beetle who was once a burglar, and much more. Mr Leakey’s domestic and professional life are completely credible because the author was an eminent physicist, so thought hard about the practical effects of magic. Buy this for every bright child you know: it is pure bliss.

Jonathan Stroud’s The Golem’s Eye (Doubleday, £12.99; offer £10.39) returns us to the power struggle between another kind of magician, young Nathaniel, who first summoned the djinn Bartimaeus in The Amulet of Samarkand. Their fractious, resentful partnership in a London ruled by magician-politicians all vying for power is as hugely enjoyable as before. Kitty, the mysterious girl who encountered Nathaniel as a young boy, moves to centre-stage as her Resistance is blamed for the destructive work of a gigantic golem rampaging through London. Nathaniel, now older and colder as a teenager, is fighting for his political life even as rebels try to undermine the grotesquely unjust system imposed on ordinary people. When Kitty is tricked into releasing the enchanted skeleton of a former prime minister, it takes all Bartimaeus’s skill and speed as a reluctant familiar to save her life and Nathaniel’s career. The alternating perspectives between three central characters add depth, detail and humour to the action-packed thrills.

P. B. Kerr’s The Akhenaten Adventure (Scholastic; £9.99, offer £8.49) is pure action-packed fun of a kind any child of 9+ will revel in. John and Philippa suddenly acquire hereditary magical powers when their wisdom teeth start to come through. While under anaesthetic, the twins have the same dream (cleverly interwoven with features from Coleridge’s Kubla Khan) in which their uncle Nimrod tells them they are djinns, like their beautiful mother, and must leave their native New York to come to London.

Their powers come at a price, however, and after unconsciously granting the wishes of a few people around them, the twins are plunged into a heart-stopping adventure in Cairo packed with ghosts, Ifrits (hideous spectres) and Akhenaten himself. This is the first of a projected Children of the Lamp series and I can’t wait to read more. If the prose reads like a film-script rather than a novel, it’s because The Akhenaten Adventure, like Stroud’ s Amulet of Samarkand, is soon to be a Hollywood movie.

Philip Pullman’s version of Aladdin (Scholastic, £14.99; offer £11.99) is written with the masterly ease and wit we expect from the reigning master of children’s literature, and will undoubtedly be the hottest gift for four to seven-year-olds this Christmas. The illustrations by Sophy Williams are swooningly romantic; I loved her female djinn’s glowing red eyes, and her picture of the enchanted underground garden where Aladdin first finds the lamp, sparkling with tiny dabs of diamond light.

It’s paradoxical that, just when the adults of the Western world have become most fearful of the Arab world, one of the most ambiguous figures from The Arabian Nights has become so popular. Djinns can make your wildest dreams come true, but they can also destroy everything they’ve made possible. Only Disney’s Aladdin ever had the decency to wish his slave freedom, earning his genie’s life-long friendship. Worth thinking about, at least in the world of children.

Read on

The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye by A. S. Byatt (13+)

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