An early Easter this year could mean unsettled weather during the school holidays. But children will find there is plenty of bright adventure and laughs in the following indoor amusements.

0- to 4-year-olds

Fussy Freya (Frances Lincoln £11.99) is not for the squeamish: Katharine Quarmby's rollicking verse tells how a three-year-old picky eater orders warthog and monkey, and learns a lesson when that is what granny serves. Piet Grobler's watercolours have a sinister, angular exaggeration, like German expressionism. For children who like their food familiar and their rhymes revolting.

The Odd Egg by Emily Gravett (Macmillan £10.99) introduces a duck who finds a huge green speckled egg. Other birds (owl, hen, parrot and flamingo) lay and hatch their own, but the found egg contains a surprise. A lovely pencil line, muted watercolours, endearing characterisation and a surprise resolution make this another triumph for Gravett.

When Dinosaurs Came with Everything by Elise Broach (Simon & Schuster £5.99) is funny and delightful fantasy fulfilment - about a day when real dinosaurs are giveaways on a shopping trip. Skilful, retro, 1950s-style cartoon illustrations by David Small fill this book with character, incident, humour and warmth.

Ladybird books are prettier than they used to be. Mini Ladybirds at £1.99 are useful diversions for 3-5s during a meal out or while waiting in a queue. With designer-look illustrations and successful educational devices, they invite interaction: My Best Book About Cars, for instance (see also Baby Animals, Tractors, Farms), uses counting, tracing routes and spot-the-difference. They may be short on story, but if you remember them as dull, look again.

Dudley the Daydreamer has a boring job (drawn in black and white), which he loses because he daydreams all day (in colour) about exploring, going to the moon, riding elephants and winning the World Cup. Then he finds a dream job instead. Anders Brundin's celebration of the imagination (Winged Chariot Press £8), illustrated with bright patterns, flat colours and definite lines by Joanna Rubin Dranger, is for 3-6s and the young at heart.

5- to 8-year-olds

Chocolate and cats are a winning combination, but what makes The Chocolate Cat (Templar £10.99), Sue Stainton's story of a confectioner's lazy moggy who finds new inspiration, are Anne Mortimer's sumptuous illustrations with their feast of photographic detail, which is painstaking and lavish almost to the point of kitsch. This is a large picturebook for anyone not afraid to promote chocolate to 4- to 6-year-olds (after all, it is Easter).

Humphrey the classroom hamster, already a star in America, is increasingly popular here. He's a moral little rodent, full of wisdom about how to treat people, and in Trouble According to Humphrey by BettyG Burney (Faber £4.99) he makes a sacrifice to clear a child of a false accusation. Humphrey may be worthy and sentimental, but children fall for him, and you can't beat him for old-fashioned, feelgood life lessons.

The style of Mr Gum and the Power Crystals (Egmont £4.99) is entirely different - nonsensical, idiosyncratic, proceeding randomly, and full of yucky stuff - but moral, too. Although all is played for laughs, including the scribbly pictures by David Tazzyman, friendship matters, good triumphs and sacrifice is noble. This fourth book pits series heroine Polly against nasty Mr Gum to overcome a historical curse.

Nicola Davies's collection of three stories about farm children, Up on the Hill (Walker £4.99), is a gem. Well-told, moving and realistic narratives convey the practicalities of rural life - egg-collecting, the birth of puppies, training sheepdogs, caring for an orphan lamb. Nature is a benevolent influence as children deal with family issues.

9- to 11-year-olds

The plot of Dean Lorey's Nightmare Academy: Charlie's Monsters (HarperCollins £6.99), the first book of a new series, has a lot in common with Harry Potter: it involves three friends (two boys and a girl) in a school where they cultivate magic powers and take on the forces of evil. Yet the variations on this familiar scenario make for a commendable and witty read. Charlie is afflicted with a Gift: his nightmares come true when he dreams them. He has been home-schooled by his protective parents ever since a nasty incident at his nursery. Until one day he is fetched from home by a cowboy and two companions...Battles with monsters ensue.

Lucy Coats, who has previously retold myths and legends, brings this knowledge to her first novel, Hootcat Hill (Orion £9.99), in which a bullied schoolgirl in a rural community fulfils her mythical destiny. The result is a lyrical fantasy full of old, dark magic entertainingly bound up with ordinary life.

After Lion Boy, Zizou Corder introduces Lee Raven, Boy Thief (Puffin £6.99) for children of 10 +. Set in a future that seems to combine the present and a Dickensian past, it is cleverly plotted and slickly told in a variety of voices from slangy to orotund. The story concerns an extraordinary manuscript and a young pickpocket accidentally embroiled in dangerous events.

12 years +

Jacques Couvillon's quirky Chicken Dance (Bloomsbury £6.99) is a thrilling discovery. Written with an offbeat, satirical sprightliness, it's the story of Don, who lives on a two-bit, small-town chicken farm and is overshadowed in his discontented mother's memory by his late, perfect, ballet-dancing elder sister. When Don wins the Horse Island chicken-judging contest, he becomes a local hero. Which leads, him, as his funny, distinctive tale unfolds, to a hidden family secret and a life-affirming denouement.

A majestic achievement, richly evoking time and place, and full of resonance for today, Philip Reeve's Here Lies Arthur (Scholastic £6.99) retells the Arthurian legend with the twist that every myth we have heard about the king was invented or tricksily staged by Merlin/Myrddin, his magician/spin doctor, to build a public image for an unimpressive lout. Myrddin's girl assistant, disguised as a boy, witnesses the brutal truth.

Remember those long-lost edgy summers of experimentation and discovery with your teenage mates? Kevin Brooks's Black Rabbit Summer (Puffin £10.99) is a compulsive, atmospheric mystery that captures brilliantly the sad, dangerous intensity of youthful relationships, when old friends meet at a fair for a reunion that changes the lives of those who survive.

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