The story of Captain Slaughterboard and his motley crew aboard The Black Tiger is a real swashbuckling yarn full of rum, tobacco, sharpened steel, bad ink and finding your inner peace… which is nice, really. Peake has created some fearsome pirates and illustrated each with such wit and detail that you can almost smell them from the pages. The pen and ink drawings are elaborate with barnacle-encrusted flourishes and are complemented well by the hand-lettered narrative that is oh so droll. The perfect book for the little pirate.

I love Seibold’s books (it was his Penguin Dreams that first started my interest in children’s books) and this book is no disappointment. The illustrations are a fantastical merger of Seibold’s signature computer-drawn graphics with a rococo flair, all laid on spray-painted backgrounds in a Technicolor palette. And the cover has glitter! Sound too much? Noooo. Never. Not when paired with an absurd re-jig of old classic rhymes (which, let’s be honest, weren’t so solid anyway — “Hey diddle diddle the cow jumped over the moon”?). The result is gelastic, an hysterical pairing of illustration and verse. The perfect book for giggles and nonsense.

Fox is a modern fable that pulls no punches. It tells a tale of friendship and betrayal so openly and rawly that it takes your breath away — especially in the context of a picture book. The rich, burnt colours and scratchy textures feel dusty and sun-parched, evocative of the Australian landscape. Hand-drawn lettering, etched awkwardly with the illustrator’s left hand, brings an additional layer of naïvety to the text. The tale of Fox, Dog and Magpie is unexpected from a picture book, and certainly not a story for juniors, but any child who has spent hard time in the school playground will take some meaning from the telling. The perfect book for the easily misled.

This is a simple tale of boy who, incredibly, believably, eats books. And it might be the power of suggestion or just the clever bite-mark in the corner of its last few pages, but if I was going to eat a book it would be this delicious-looking thing. Its matte pages, filled with rich mixed-media illustrations and collages, look very tasty. Like many good books the humour is contained in the details surrounding the text and tucked into the corners of the pictures, which makes it rewarding to read many times over. The perfect book for a bookish child.

Purple, black, lime green and pink all contribute to a lush mix of the gothic and the comic in this delightful book. And the story of Dagmar the vegetarian, candy-loving, vampire child is a great match for to Seibold’s quirky and arresting style. The devils are truly in the details, and small touches like the reflections in Dagmar’s eyes, and a very cleverly placed striped Wally, feel like treats left for eagle-eyed readers. The perfect book for Hallowe’en.

Yes, the Paul Rand created the graphics for this book, and they are every bit as good as you expect. Bold shapes, slightly abstract and often funny, fill the pages, following the text rather than leading it. And the text is worth following—lyrical and fluid, it expounds on the joy and wonder of words and all their curious ways. Any child starting on their discovery of words would be fascinated. The perfect book for the budding wordsmith.

This illustrated book with its fun facts and delightful portraits of New York life could double as a travel guide. The illustrations are a snapshot of the time—the 1950s New York Abstract scene—and it is written with a wit and humour also befitting the period. A very stylish book that would be fun to read to any child (or adult) ahead of their first trip to the big apple. The perfect book for the “Mad Men” fan.