Enter any bookshop today and much professed fears about children and reading dissipate. From Harry Potter to Alex Rider, new writing for children is everywhere. Many have called the 2000s a new ‘Golden Age of Children’s Literature’.

Yet contemporary children’s literature is not an imaginative free-for-all. There is pressure to be relevant to modern children’s lives and this often takes the form of an ethical, as well as imaginative, narrative. From the gritty realism of Melvin Burgess’ Junk to the socially aware alternative world of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses, children’s fiction today often reflects a deeply flawed world. But are ethical concerns in children’s literature today the same as the moral fables of yesterday? Peter Hitchens called Philip Pullman ‘the most dangerous author in Britain’, claiming that Pullman was out to dethrone CS Lewis’ classic Narnia tales and supplant them with others that ‘proclaim the death of God to the young’.

But is Lewis’ 20th century view of Christian morality simply out-of-date for today’s kids, living in a de-facto secular and multicultural society? Are there some children’s books that are so out-of-kilter with today’s society and our moral values, they should be consigned to the dustbin of history? And shouldn’t fiction today help children to deal with current social issues and help them develop as responsible citizens? But does such socially concerned literature spell the death of escapism and imagination in children’s fiction? Isn’t it enough if a book simply entertains a child? And do classic children’s tales of the past have anything to offer our children imaginatively and morally?