Dragons have probably had more written about them than any other mythological creature. From Brian Patten's hauntingly tender poem A Small Dragon to Ogden Nash's bouncy The Tale of Custard the Dragon, they have come to represent a great many contradictory aspects of our own nature, as a clutch of recent dragon books shows.

One of the most charming for 3+ is The Trouble With Dragons (Bloomsbury, £10.99/ offer £9.89 inc p&p) by Debi Gliori. Here thoughtless, ecologically wasteful dragons are taking up all the space, food and drink, until the world gets so hot that “everything's cov-ered in water or sand”. The animals then give the dragons some stern advice. Leave trees alone, eat locally grown food, walk more, recycle ... The cover makes it look too cute but Gliori's quirky pictures and couplets are full of dry humour, as well as an important message.

Greed is a familiar feature; all Tolkien's dragons are strictly interested in seizing and hoarding treasure. Rosemary Manning's classic Green Smoke (reissued by Jane Nissen, £6.99/£6.64) has a gentler comic version of this for 6+. Sue finds her vain but kindly dragon living in a Cornish cave by the sea. In exchange for half her bun she is told some classic English fairytales, some involving King Arthur. Here, the dragon represents a sense of imagination and independence. Modern dragons can be taken as symbols of depression (You've Got Dragons by Kathryn Cave and Nick Maland), immaturity (M.P. Robertson's The Egg), or pacifism (Kenneth Grahame's The Reluctant Dragon): they are what we don't understand unless we change.

For children of 8+, I again recommend Carole Wilkinson's Dragonkeeper trilogy (Dragonkeeper, Garden of the Purple Dragon, Dragon Moon, Macmillan, from £5.99/offer £5.69). Wilkinson's series carries a strong ecological and moral message wrapped in towering adventure. Her dragons are, in accordance with Chinese mythology, benign spirits of the land. Their dance relieves drought, but they are hunted by evil Necromancers. Ping, an escaped orphan slave girl, has to bring the last dragon's child to safety. Whether modern China will learn to value what dragons represent is another matter.

Christopher Paolini's sub-Tolkien fantasy Eragon is an international bestseller, and the third in the series, Brisingr (Doubleday, £16.99/£15.29), is published this month. Eragon, the simple farmboy, is now uniting rebel forces to save the world with the help of his dra-gon Sapphira, and there are the usual orcs and elves, and places that sound like headache tablets. I dislike these books as derivative and poorly written, but there is no denying that many children (especially boys) of 11+ love them, and certainly the idea of having a dragon as your best friend in a battle is appealing.

The fourth of M.P. Robertson's charming books about young George and his dragon has them sorting out two quarrelsome trolls in The Dragon and the Gruesome Twosome (Frances Lincoln, £11.99/ £10.79). These are perfect for 5+, with gorgeous pictures.

Even better is Cressida Cowell's inspired series about Hiccup and his dragon Toothless, the sixth of which, How to Ride a Dragon's Storm (Hodder, £5.99/£5.69), is published this month. For readers of 8-12, its enchantment lies primarily in the comical, affectionate and often irritable relationship between Hiccup (the only nerd in the violent Viking Hooligan tribe) and his runty little dragon Toothless. With the first in the series, How to Train Your Dragon, being filmed by the director of Shrek, this is one to enjoy before Hollywood gets its hands on it.

The most beautiful and mysterious of all dragons are those that dance on the wind of Ursula le Guin's Earthsea books. Ged, her hero, is a Dragonmaster - that is, one of the few to whom dragons will speak, rather than kill; those who become drawn into this extraordinary fantasy world eventually learn that it was itself created by a dragon. Dragons can mean life and love, greed or abstinence, death and destruction - but however you find them, they are always fascinating.

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