Various Artists

The Faber Book of Bedtime Stories is a wonderful collection of seventeen stories written by a mixture of bestselling, and up-and-coming authors. It is wholesome and nostalgic in its style of writing. It rekindles memories of hearing classic fairytales at bedtime. However, the stories are contemporary with the characters encountering modern challenges. In the classic fairytale fashion, the heroes of the stories are presented with problems that they must overcome with a mixture of compassion, love and friendship. Each story has a positive and hopeful message for bedtime.

The most refreshing thing about this lively book of short stories for girls – written to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of women getting the vote in the UK – is how vastly varied the characters in it are. From latter-day ‘posh girl’ suffragettes to present-day girls who love insects and then on to future dystopian heroines battling climate change, no one is excluded from between the covers of this rebellious collection, the front of which is aptly illustrated with a big megaphone.

Ireland is a storied island, and that fact comes to life in this collection of tales and fables, rich in locality and colour. Gathered from an already popular series of folk tales, the stories are organised around the thirty-two counties, each injected with details and dimensions unique to those areas. Narratives range across St Patrick’s ministry in Ireland, headless horsemen, visits to the Phoenix Park to see the pope, a shoemaker in Carrick-on-Suir and the heroism of the Maggie of Maggie’s Leap in the Mourne mountains.

Sixteen stories of Black girl magic, hope and resistance have been gathered together by Patrice Caldwell into this unique collection. The tales are from bestselling and award-winning authors who explore the Black female experience through fantasy, science-fiction and magic.

This collection of short stories by eleven acclaimed children’s writers is a beautiful physical object. Reminiscent of classic book covers, it would make an excellent gift for any young reader. Even the end pages, featuring the authors’ signatures amid snowflakes, is a clever touch, and makes the collection seem more personal.

Is there such a thing as a happy home at Christmas? Well, it depends on which of these fourteen stories you read, all written by the UK’s top authors for young adults and compiled in aid of the homelessness charity Crisis.

I’ll Be Home for Christmas has stories of varying lengths and styles, written by both women and men, whose biographies and pictures are listed at the back of the book which are useful to flick back to every now and then.

Chris Riddell’s startlingly effective cover and end-papers depict an androgynous captive breaking out of chains. It’s a fitting introduction indeed to a volume subtitled ‘stories that speak from freedom’ in which international authors, poets and illustrators, amongst them John Boyne, Chibundu Onuzo, Bali Rai, AL Kennedy and Sarah Crossan explore the notion of human rights under the auspices of Amnesty International and Walker Books.