CHRISTMAS is supposed to be the annual feast special to children, but as any parent knows it's really Hallowe'en. Next Friday, small ghouls and ghosts will be bobbing up and down on our doorsteps, demanding chocolates with menaces and shrieking with eldritch laughter. To get us in the mood, there are some lovely books out.

Vivian French is one of my favourite writers for 6-8s, and The Bag of Bones (Walker, £5.99) is another of the Tales From the Five Kingdoms. Like the creations of Eva Ibbotson, Kate Saunders and Jill Murphy, French's witches are the unscary sort whose weaker magic denotes a kind-lier nature. But there is a new witch in Wadingburn who is different, and with the queen about to announce her heir who knows what will happen.

Winnie the Witch, Korky Paul's creation, now has four longer adventures written by Laura Owen, in Whizz-Bang Winnie (OUP, £3.99). Here, she tries to conjure a golden egg for the school secretary's birthday, and makes her usual hilarious mess. The pictures, as ever, bristle with an inspired lunacy that 5+ love.

There is horror and humour in Anthony Horowitz's Scared (Orchard, £3.99), a collection of three creepy stories in which unpleasant teenage boys get more than they bargained for in the countryside, a computer game and Heaven. However, his real talent lets rip in Necropolis (Walker, £12.99) the fourth and best book of his ever-darkening Power of Five series. The fifth of the teenage children with special powers who must fight the demonic Old Ones is an adopted Chinese girl - Horowitz's first female protagonist, tricked and kidnapped from Dulwich to Hong Kong, whose pollution has become a chilling manifestation of zombies and shape-shifters. The superbly menacing plot will compel anyone of 12+.

That wily weaver of spine-crawling tales, Chris Priestley, is back with Tales of Terror from the Black Ship (Bloomsbury, £10.99/£9.89). Ethan and Carly are alone in the storm-lashed Old Inn. A mysterious Mr Thackeray who begs for shelter is soon telling the siblings tales that stir strange memories of black ships and ghosts, demons and destruction, with Edward Goreyesque pictures by David Roberts (above) to echo Priestley's glum wit. Perfect for lugubrious nine-year-olds.

If Priestley sounds too lowering, Debi Gliori's Witch Baby and Me (Corgi, £4.99) is a perfect antidote. The narrator is convinced that her baby sister Daisy is a witch, though “everyone else thinks she's sweet and adorable”. Daisy's smelly, invisible pet WayWoof is one proof, even before her sister sees fridges float. A charming comedy about sibling jealousy, it takes a six-year-old's belief in magic and in passionate feelings equally seriously.

Jeremy de Quidt's The Toymaker (David Fickling, £12.99) is an arresting debut. When the circus boy Marcus takes a small roll of paper from a dying conjuror, he finds himself the keeper of a secret that may get him killed. The sinister Dr Leiter and a murderous dwarf both hunt for him - as do the circus master and his greedy wife. Marcus and serving-girl Katta flee, aided only by the strangely knowledgeable Koenig. Who is the Toymaker, and why is he so interested in young girls? Although it ends on one of those maddening cliff-hangers now too common in children's fiction, this is beautifully produced, and worth reading aloud to 9+.

The very best of creepy tales is The Graveyard Book (Bloomsbury, £12.99) by Neil Gaiman. Parents familiar with Coraline or with the film Stardust will need no warning about just how dark and weird this author's imagination is (I will be interviewing him in Books next week). This collection of eight stories is about a baby boy who escapes from the killers who murder his family, and totters into the graveyard where he is protected and educated by ghosts - and a vampire.

This is one of the most original and touching children's books I've read all year, exquisitely illustrated by Chris Riddell. Gaiman's work is crafted and composed with care - this book was 20 years in the writing - and there isn't a sentence out of place in its description of how the supernatural may be kinder and safer than the mortal world. Buy it for 11+; it is a Hallowe'en treasure that will last long after your pumpkins have filled up with empty sweet wrappers.

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