Books of the Year for younger children

The winter's surprise hit is a book about a bear and a boy. Ben Blathwayt's Minnow and the Bear (Hutchinson, £10.99) is ostensibly a coming-of-age tale, set in cave dwelling times, before nature was tamed. Amid lush countryside vivid with wildlife, the tale of Minnow unfolds: he falls in a river and is swept far downstream, clinging to a tree trunk that also hosts a baby bear. The pair become friends and together they learn how to survive before embarking on an arduous trek home. The seasons are shown changing in intricate detail. Bushes burst with berries in summer, then hang heavy with nuts in autumn. By winter Minnow and his ursine companion are battling blizzards and dodging stampedes of bison. Ultimately the boy saves his cave family and is held up a hero among his tribe of hunters.

Who would have thought such a tale could hold a tiny child so rapt? Mine loves the perfectly drawn salmon and frogs, bladderwrack and butterflies. She loves the danger of the blizzard and the bison. And she lies in her cot reciting the words. Blathwayt's text has a purity to it which echoes his pristine landscapes, untainted by civilisation. But to me the book is nothing less than a painstaking love letter to the natural world.

Another bear book keeps all the adults in my house amused. Jon Klassen's I Want My Hat Back (Walker, £11.99) is simple, surreal, darkly humorous and has a fierce punchline. Too complex for a baby, I thought, sifting through its themes of truth and lying, murder, politeness and revenge. But she got the joke instantly and cracks up laughing at the mere expression on the badly drawn bear's face.

In Zoe's Christmas List (Macmillan, £10.99) it is a polar bear who steals the show. The latest book in Chloe and Mick Inkpen's popular Zoe and Beans series is all about adorable illustration. Zoe, desperate for a Christmas present of Kylie Kurlz, a Barbie-style doll, decides to take her letter direct to Father Christmas. So the girl and her dog, Beans, set off on a trip that sees them swimming past icebergs and tramping through snowstorms to pin her note to the North Pole (an actual red and white striped pole) with only ham and jam sandwiches to keep them going. They pick up the little polar bear en route, rescuing him, Frozen Planet style, from a tiny ice floe before sledging on their lunchbox while the aurora borealis dances in the sky above. There is magic in this sweetly rendered tale, which is just on the acceptable side of cute, and crucially, the girl gets her doll.

Every parent needs payback and the book that delivers it for me is Guess How Much I Love You (Walker, £14.99), or Guess How Love I Much You, as my daughter calls it. The clever, heart-melting classic by Sam McBratney has been remodelled as a pop-up with such ingenious paper engineering (by Corina Fletcher) that I defy the most hard-boiled cynic not to smile with delight as the little hare's arms fly open, or he tumbles upside down in his attempts to demonstrate his love for Big Nut Brown Hare. Sadly my little nut brown hare loved it just too much and ripped out several animals in her enthusiasm. Still, it's an exquisite book for adults too.

Tove Jansson is enjoying a mini revival thanks to the opening of the Moomin Shop in Covent Garden, which will be shifting Moomin mugs by the truckload this Christmas. But what better excuse for a trip back down to magical Moominvalley, Jansson's mythical community of curious creatures. My toddler and I have been enjoying the beautiful, poignant Moomin and the Winter Snow (Puffin, £6.99), in which Moomintroll comes to terms with the southerly migration of his good friend Snufkin at the first scent of snow.

Snufkin, a kind of benign vagrant, will be back in the spring and Moomin must get ready to hibernate through winter. It's a sweet way to explain seasons to a child and a chance for grown-ups to revel in Jansson's richly imagined drawings. Pee-hoo to that.