So, the Harry Potters ended with a good deal of pain, unfinished business and the possibility of posthumous revelations, like an actual bereavement. The sequence deserves wild applause. But important information was later added – through webchats and at author events – about the characters’ jobs, marriages and (less need-to-know) sexual orientation. In future, perhaps it will be necessary only to publish half a story: the rest can be told in answer to readers’ questions. The following books – my favourites of 2007 – observe the convention of being complete in themselves.

0-to 3-year-olds

Polly Dunbar’s vibrant Penguin (Walker £10.99 or £7.99 in paperback plus a DVD), about a toddler and his frustratingly silent soft toy, was the winner of the 2007 Early Years award. With flat colours, white space and a big blue lion, it addresses themes of anger, danger and love, and encourages children to remember events, read pictures and laugh.

No two-year-old’s life is complete without We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by the children’s laureate Michael Rosen (illustrated by Helen Oxenbury). The Bear in the Cave (Bloomsbury £10.99) now reveals what the bear gets up to when he is not being pursued: leaving his seaside cave to visit the noisy city (“vroomity vroom”). Adrian Reynolds draws cosily pneumatic figures and makes atmospheric use of light. The book includes a CD humorously read by Rosen.

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Glittering literary prizes 2007

From hidden secrets to sizzling suspense, Peter Kemp kicks off the Christmas books selection by revealing the fiction that gripped him

• Celebrity festive favourites

• The Times Christmas choice: fiction

Background

• The Sunday Times best books of 2007: biographies

• The Sunday Times best books of 2007: trees

• The Sunday Times best books of 2007: art

• The Sunday Times best books of 2007: music

Background

• The Sunday Times best books of 2007: sport

• The Sunday Times best books 2007: gardening

• Sunday Times best food books 2007

After Mog’s demise in Goodbye Mog, how pleasing to have a new cat picturebook from Judith Kerr with a feel-good plot and her gentle, pencil-crayon pictures. In Twinkles, Arthur and Puss (HarperCollins £12.99), three cats with three owners turn out to have an unexpected link.

A hoot for 2-to 5-year-olds is Rob Scotton’s Russell’s Christmas Magic (HarperCollins £5.99), his third picturebook about Russell, the googly-eyed sheep from Frogsbottom field. Russell saves Christmas by adapting an old car when Santa’s sleigh crashes. Illustrated with twinkling caricatures sprinkled with stardust.

For 2-to 6-year-olds, The Bear with Sticky Paws (Orchard £10.99) by Clara Vulliamy has cuteness, skilled draughtsmanship, spirit and decorative flair. A grumpy girl left briefly alone is visited by a bear who eats a lot of countable edibles. The messy visit reforms the child’s behaviour. Elements of The Cat in the Hat, The Hungry Caterpillar, Raymond Briggs’s The Bear, and The Tiger Who Came to Tea give it the feeling of a classic.

Tony Ross is so prolific that his humorous, casually dextrous illustrations may be taken for granted, but in Three Little Kittens and Other Nursery Rhymes (Andersen £12.99) they reward scrutiny. Costumes from various historical eras, for instance, often have one anachronistic modern detail. Nursery rhymes help instil language in babies; this collection (of 48) will also stimulate older children. After all, a hardback picturebook is for life, not just for Christmas.

4-to 7-year-olds

A bucktoothed inventor mouse in Chris Riddell’s Wendel’s Workshop (Macmillan £10.99) learns never to throw anything on the scrapheap when a robot he rejected rescues him from an overzealous successor. Scrap has never been so picturesque.

Leonardo the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems (Walker £10.99), for 3-to 6-year-olds, is about a little monster who is terrible at being one, even when he tries to “scare the tuna salad out of” a boy he ends up befriending. Reminiscent of Maurice Sendak, and Charlie Brown comic strips, its funny, pared-down text in decorative capitals like Victorian theatre bills and quirky cartoons concentrates emotion.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler have never quite matched the extraordinary success of The Gruffalo in subsequent collaborations, but their celebration of story, Tiddler (Alison Green/Scholastic £10.99), could do it. In flawless rhyme and rhythm, a small fish tells tall tales to excuse his lateness at school. When a real drama gets him lost, a trail of his own stories, retold admiringly by wide-eyed sea creatures, leads him home.

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