All Spider wants is to be a family pet. But, the family, whose house he lives in, are terrified of him. Whenever he tries to show them what a great pet he would make, they simply cry: "aaaarrgghh, spider!"

Marooned on a sandbank, a boy faces certain death. With the sea closing in and the current about to drag him to a watery grave, his final wish is to see heaven. Waking in a strange bed, the boy meets an old man. It is Arthur, the warrior king of legend, and from his lips the boy hears of Camelot, chivalry, magic, evil and betrayal.

The three youngsters encounter a greedy and repulsive villain, itchy clothing, a disastrous fire, a plot to steal their fortune and cold porridge for breakfast.

Bambert lives alone in his attic home. He feels out of place in the world and finds solace in the characters he creates in his stories. One day, he decides to send his eleven stories out into the world, to find their own (true) setting. He attaches them to paper balloons and sends them out on a windy night. The eleventh story is blank.

It's only a few days into the half-term holidays and Barry's dad has already had enough of him! He's packing Barry off to Pirate Camp, the same one he used to be sent to every year. Barry's not impressed - he's not a baby anymore, so why should he have to go to a camp for kiddywinkles? But horrible things are afoot at Pirate Camp...

Elliot is terrified of almost everything. The only thing that keeps his terrors in check are the pills that he takes every day. It's Christmas Eve, there's a snowstorm and Elliot's medication is almost gone. His mum nips out to collect his prescription. She'll only be 10 minutes - but when she doesn't come back, Elliot must face his fears...

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace - Christopher Robin went down with Alice. Alice is marrying one of the guard. "A soldier's life is terrible hard," Says Alice. This poetry collection is steeped in the history and culture of the British Isles - and generations of British children have grown up with them.

Only in wartime could a stalwart lass from Manchester rub shoulders with a Scottish aristocrat, one a pilot, the other a special operations executive. When a vital mission goes wrong, and one of the friends has to bail out of a faulty plane over France, she is captured by the Gestapo and becomes a prisoner of war.