Amazing Tales for Making Men out of Boys by Neil Oliver (Penguin, £17.99, 12+)
Buy the book

Superpowers by David J. Schwartz (Vintage, £7.99, 14+)
Buy the book

Dusk by Kenneth Oppel (Faber, £6.99, 10+)
Buy the book

Jimmy Coates: Survival by Joe Craig (HarperCollins, £5.99, 10+)
Buy the book

The Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer (Puffin, £12.99, 11+)
Buy the book

The Spook's Mistake by Joseph Delaney (Bodley Head, £9.99, 11+)
Buy the book

Percy Jackson and The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan (Puffin, £9.99, 10+)
Buy the book

The Crossing of Ingo by Helen Dunmore (HarperCollins, £12.99, 10+)
Buy the book

THIS IS THE SUMMER of the superhero. From the TV series Heroes, to six new blockbuster movies swashbuckling their way across our screens, the superhero is back with a vengeance. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a fashion show, Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, inspiring designers such as Galliano and Gaultier, while kids with superpowers are popping up in children's books.

Children and teenagers are a natural audience for such tales, yet for several decades heroism of all kinds fell out of fashion, even in children's literature. Is it, as Neil Oliver suggests in his must-have collection Amazing Tales for Making Men out of Boys that “We've forgotten - or discarded - the value and importance of being manly men”? Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were pumped-up living cartoons, more risible than admirable in the 1980s, but the old-fashioned hero began a comeback with films such as Gladiator, Master & Commander and The Lord of the Rings.

The urgency to rediscover the superhero, however, has gained added edge since terrorism turned the First World into something dangerously close to the territory of Marvel comics. David J.Schwartz's witty and charming debut, Superpowers - an adult novel but teenagers of 14+ will enjoy it - is a reaction to 9/11, and a dramatisation of his conflicting anxiety and anger; as is Iron Man, the first of six films featuring superheroes this summer, with its subtext of American anguish over the Iraq War.

Children's literature, as so often, is in the vanguard of fashion, but often draws more subtle moral conclusions. For each child, the possession of superpowers makes life both more exciting and more dangerous, with global implications; but also very personal temptations to violence and vindictiveness.

Superheroes don't have to be human to appeal: Kenneth Oppel's Dusk is an intelligent and original thriller set 65 million years ago about a young chiropter (arboreal glider) who is cast out as a freak. Dusk's agonised search for his identity is merged with the survival of his species as they are hunted, drugged, tricked, and forced into battle. Dusk becomes the world's first bat, and like the X-Men, his abilities are double-edged, isolating yet saving him before he finds a new home.

Oppel, a rising star here and in his native Canada says: “True heroism, for me, means having the strength of your convictions, doing something difficult and dangerous, but above all, placing the good of others above yourself. I wonder if these kinds of stories are particularly appealing during periods where people often feel anxious and bewildered - global terrorism, climate change, the ethics of being a First World consumer in a world still teeming with Third World poverty.”

Joe Craig's fantastically enjoyable Jimmy Coates stories, about an 11-year-old boy who discovers he's only 38 per cent human, and a pre-programmed government assassin with superhuman powers of strength, speed and endurance is another case in point. Jimmy has to save his mother, sister, and best friend's family from a government bent on undermining civil liberties through fear, as well as fighting two rival teenaged assassins. But although the latest instalment, Jimmy Coates: Survival will be familiar to admirers of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider, the real battle is internal.

For the ultimate challenge for every superhero is himself - as Superman discovered, and as the latest in Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series, The Time Paradox, wittily explores in August. Joseph Delaney's terrifying and brilliant Wardstone Chronicles probes the nature of evil. The ambiguous relationship between all the characters is as gripping as the gory battles against blood-sucking witches and demons, forcing its hero to continually question whether evil is inherited or chosen, especially in The Spook's Mistake.

According to Delaney, “A hero needs courage, perseverance and a moral code. Tom has special abilities, such as being able to see and hear the dead but, more importantly, he faces his fear and does what is necessary, despite risks to his own life and soul.”

Special abilities are undoubtedly what draw young readers, but it's not enough for a hero simply to be gifted. Percy Jackson, Rick Riordan's hero, is a dyslexic demi-god, destined to save the world, in riotously clever thrillers that are deepening as Percy matures in The Battle of the Labyrinth.

“Heroes need to be real enough to create empathy, and yet have the courage, foresight, special powers and moral compass to do what we wish we could do,” Riordan says.

Helen Dunmore's magical Ingo quartet, about a brother and sister who are able to breathe underwater thanks to their Mer blood, braving great dangers to save the land from the wrath of the sea, reaches a dramatic climax in The Crossing of Ingo.

If superheroes appear to be bigger, bolder or more violent than the ordinary kind - as represented by the much-loved, middle-aged Indiana Jones - then their challenges dramatise the kinds of problems that we all encounter. They appear at dark times in the history, and are needed now as then, to comfort us.

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist