DRAGONS ARE THE demand of the day, and Carole Wilkinson’s Dragonkeeper (Macmillan, £8.99/offer £8.54) knocks scales off Christopher Paolini’s sub-Tolkien saga Eragon, which is being filmed for Christmas.

Ping is a slave in the freezing north of China, where the last dragons are being cruelly abused by her master. When she escapes with Long Danzi, it’s a flight not just to freedom but to wisdom, heroism and responsibility. Touching, gripping and tremendously good.

Mythical creatures are flourishing in Helen Dunmore’s The Tide Knot (HarperCollins, £12.99/£11.99), the second in her Ingo quartet about mermaids. Saffy and her brother have moved from their old home and their mother is forgetting their lost father. But Saffy has not lost her power to breathe under water. In a thrillingly dark story in which Ingo is about to wreak destruction on the Earth, Dunmore captures the power and intoxication of the Cornish seas.

Michael Morpurgo’s Alone on the Wide, Wide Sea (HarperCollins, £12.99/£11.99) is also about love and sea. Arthur is sent from Liverpool to Australia to escape the Second World War but finds cruelty and forced labour in the Outback. Years later his daughter Allie makes the return journey alone in a sailing boat. Lyrical and moving, it is one of the former Children’s Laureate’s best books for years.

More misery in the Outback comes in the second of Paul Dowswell’s Sam Witchall adventures, Prison Ship (Bloomsbury, £12.99/£11.99). The engaging Sam is led in battle by Nelson, but witnessing a fraud gets him framed for cowardice, and transported to the colonies. Although it has a long fuse, this is another splendid book for 11+ boys, with a masterly climax as the boys struggle to escape from a cannibal comrade. Less upright heroism is to be enjoyed in the second of Justin Somper’s viciously clever Vampirates book, Tide of Terror (Simon & Schuster, £6.99/£6.64) in which the Tempest twins join forces as pirates but are forced to confront the evil Sidorio.

The sexiest vampire tale for years arrived in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, (Atom, £12.99/£11.99) about teenage Bella’s chaste romance with a beautiful vampire boy. Their intensely erotic feelings are endangered by more predatory types. Guaranteed to suck in sulky 13+ girls for hours.

Anthony Horowitz’s teenage spy Alex Rider enjoyed his first film outing this year in Stormbreaker, but for 13+ his new Messiah, Matt Freeborn, is going into even darker places with Evil Star (Walker, £6.99/£6.64). Orphaned Matt is as vulnerable as ever to the evil Old Ones trying to kill him at school or abroad. Cheesy but totally terrific, it has a stellar stand-off in Peru.

Jospeh Delaney is going from strength to strength in the Wardstone Chronicles, and the third, The Spook’s Secret (Bodley Head, £8.99/£8.54) reaches classic status. Tom’s master has taken him to his winter home on the moors, where feral witches lie chained in the cellar and a drugged lamia cooks for them. A huge hit with those who’ve outgrown Harry Potter, they are as viscerally scary as Darren Shan’s disgustingly enjoyable new Demonata series, without the tide of gore.

Anthony McGowan deservedly won the Booktrust teenage prize for his refreshingly rude and clever Henry Tumour (Doubleday, £10.99/£9.99), about a boy with a talking cancer in his head.

Beast, about a fostered teenager who is keeping a mysterious monster in the marsh, was a stunningly good debut from Ally Kennen (Marion Lloyd Books, £6.99/£6.64). Michelle Paver’s Soul Eater (Orion, £9.99/£9.49), the third of the consistently superb Chronicles of Ancient Darkness novels, is meticulously realised as the Stone Age Torak and Renn race across ice and fight polar bears to save the kidnapped Wolf from demonic sacrifice.

Two captivating comic adventures revive Greek myth. Paul Shipton’s sequel to The Pig Scrolls has Odysseus’s reluctant porcine hero Gryllus being The Pig Who Saved the World (Puffin, £5.99/£5.69) — again! Rick Riordan’s American teenager Percy Jackson has struck gold with his second adventure in Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters (Puffin, £10.99/£9.99), having discovered that his dyslexia and attention deficit disorder mask demi-god status. Whether the heroes are up against Cyclops or befriended by them, pursued by Thanatos, Kronos, gods or monsters, both books are pure pleasure and profoundly intelligent. I can't recommend them too highly for 11-13s.

Scott Westerfeld’s trilogy, Uglies, Pretties and Specials (Simon & Schuster, £6.99 each/£6.64) gets my vote for best books for teens this year. Set in a future where everyone has compulsory plastic surgery at 16 — plus an operation to make them compliant — all three volumes are action-packed and well written. They show searing intelligence about the nightmare our children may inherit.

Teenage critics, page 16

Next week: Children’s nonfiction

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