Children's literature

Books, comics, films, video games ... does it matter how children discover stories? Keeping an open mind is just one way to help get them hooked

In Ten Little Rabbits, a new posthumous picture book by Maurice Sendak, Mino the Magician waves his wand and, poof, a rabbit appears. Another wave and out springs a second and then a third. By the forth rabbit, Mino yawns. By the sixth, he's annoyed. Ninth, he's exasperated, as the rabbits crawl all over him.  Read more

The best children's fiction "helps us refind things we may not even know we have lost", writes the author Katherine Rundell, with many books proving subversive, emboldening - and awe-inspiring.

Accepting the coveted Caldecott medal in 1964, an annual award honouring the "most distinguished American picture book for children", the author Maurice Sendak addressed the rumbles of disapproval his winning book had received from some quarters about it being too frightening by wryly commenting, "Where the Wild Things Are was not meant to please everybody - only children."

Beloved creator of Fungus the Bogeyman and Father Christmas brought a distinctive strain of melancholy to the genre