Picture books for key stage 2 readers require a balance of graphics and grist – too cute and you’ll insult their sense of maturity. Dancing across the divide from picture- to text-led is Abby Hanlon’s anarchic Dory Fantasmagory (Faber £6.99), for the very youngest in this range.

Poor Dory: nobody wants to play with a kid sister whose imagination is matched by her pestiferousness. Hanlon’s cartoons add devilment to the narrative, mostly set in Dory’s imagination. Her siblings make up a baby-stealing bogeywoman to scare her; Dory responds by darting Mrs Gobble Gracker with sedatives. Very funny.

Belleville Rendezvous and The Illusionist movie creatives Sally and Sylvain Chomet make their kid-lit debut with Caleb’s Cab (Walker £12.99), a sumptuously illustrated dystopian caper. Fetherham, where young Caleb drives his missing dad’s cab, is a run-down town. All the children have been sold off to work inside cash machines.

Fezerham, meanwhile, is a Franglish parallel dimension in which the UK and France have been happily united for 600 years (oh, Brexit). Here, though, Caleb’s dad “iz threatened wiz ze guillotine for un crime ’e did not commit”. Original, dark and screwball, this is the first of a two-parter.

Genre fiction tends to dominate as this age group progresses. William Wenton and the Luridium Thief – by another film director, the Norwegian Bobbie Peers – (Walker £6.99) is a pacey code-breaking’n’cyborgs thriller that shirks conventions. The titular William, a Brit living in Norway, has a shadowy missing grandfather and a knack for puzzles.

This makes him catnip to the Institute for Post-Human Research, who want to ask his grandfather about a missing stash of a rare mineral that makes humans borderline invincible. The climactic showdown in this inventive, soon-to-be-filmed tale comes in a wartime-era cryogenic lab hidden in disused London tube tunnels.

Fantasy has a bad rep. Hold the hoots and eyerolls, though, for Amy Wilson’s A Girl Called Owl (Macmillan £6.99), whose tween angst is complicated by being half human, half of “the fay”. She never met her dad for a reason – he is the inconstant, infuriating Jack Frost. Frozen, this is not. Owl’s nascent powers are confusing, and the mysterious new boy in school, Alberic, seems to know more about it than she does. During a search for a father in which Owl gets more than she bargained for, this is an examination of physical transformation, divided loyalties, and why winter might be in retreat.

Hashtag OMG, a book about, like, vlogging, that isn’t totally random. Clearly, when YouTube goes the way of Myspace, Rae Earl’s #Help! My Cat’s a Vlogging Superstar will be studied with wry amusement. Get past the filters, though, and Earl’s hyperventilating romp is grounded, funny and useful for dealing with the hell of being young: trolling, Fomo, et al.

Not only has Millie lost patience with her mum’s new clean-freak boyfriend, the most popular social media operator in school is reposting Millie’s funny outbursts with predatory insincerity. Millie just wants her advice vlog to be #real, but the dreaded Erin is not to be trifled with. Is wearing makeup on half your face a good #feminist compromise? Can you like a dweeb who is into escalators and #cosplay? Yes, and yes.

Fish Boy by Chloe Daykin (Faber £9.99 hardback) is a book apart: not fantasy, just fantastic. Summarising the plot does this assured, silvery writing a disservice. Billy usually has his mouth open, and a David Attenborough script running in his head, as he’s watching his stolen Nikes walk by on bully Jamie Watts’s feet.

The new kid who does magic tricks brings respite from Billy’s fact-filled isolation. But not even Patrick can prepare Billy for the incomprehensible developments at home, or the mysterious summons he receives from the deep: “Kezdodik”. Literary prizes, this way, please.

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