Best Books for Kids

The best-selling children's author, Michael Morpurgo, says books for children need to do more than amuse their readers. He picks his own favourite books written for young people.

Melvin Burgess, author of Junk and Doing It, tells us about the books that first inspired him, and picks the best thriller writing for young adults. Along the way he explains why young people make the most demanding readers.

Shelve your cynicism - Santa Claus does exist, and he took the time out to tell us his five favourite Christmas-time books. He's more of a pictures than words kind of guy, and he's been to Las Vegas.

There are a lot of books about football for sale in bookshops these days, but which ones are any good? 11-year-old Alexander, who loves football as well as reading, shares his choices of the best football books for kids as part of our 'By Children for Children' series.

Children’s author Audrey Penn picks five books she loved as a teenager – all stories of struggle in the face of adversity.

Penguin paperbacks were a publishing revolution: lightweight, affordable editions that brought high-quality fiction and non-fiction to all. Clare Morpurgo, daughter of the Penguin Books founder Allen Lane, discusses the five Penguins that she loved most as a young reader—and why it's down to her that her father never published The Hobbit.