Wheels within reels

Children's audiobooks offer beloved old jalopies and sleek new models. Christina Hardyment takes them for a spin

Over two million children's audiobooks are now sold every year, and though Harry Potter, the Tweenies, Roald Dahl, Jacqueline Wilson and Horrid Henry remain lodged high in the bestsellers, they are being challenged by exciting new writers. Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident (Puffin, 3hrs 45 mins, £9.99, read by Adrian Dunbar) is just as much fun as his first adventure of a fairy underworld's fight against the world's youngest and most brilliant arch-criminal. If you missed Artemis Fowl itself, you can now get it unabridged (BBC Cover to Cover, read by Nathaniel Parker, six CDs, £29.99).

Another excellent sequel is Cliff McNish's The Scent of Magic (Orion, c.4hrs, £9.99), read by Sian Phillips and again with spine-chilling music. This time the witches advance on earth to take their revenge on the children who killed their queen in Doomspell.

"When Eddie Dickens was 11 years old both his parents caught some awful disease which made them turn yellow, go a bit crinkly round the edges and smell of old hot water bottles," begins Philip Ardagh's pacey romp Awful End (Faber Penguin, 2hrs 30mins, £7.99). With every line mixing Victorian kitchen-sink actuality with Monty Python-esque fantasy, you may find yourself exhausted by laughing before you get to the end. Reader Sylvester McCoy rises to the occasion with all the versatility of a one-man band.

Livi Michael's Frank and the Black Hamster of Narkiz (Puffin, 3hrs, £7.99) is a vividly imagined hamster-eye view of the human – and animal – world which deserves to shoot right to the top of the charts. Frank, an orderly but determined golden hamster whose motto is "Courage!", finds himself in a very different world when he escapes under the floorboards and meets some terrifyingly predatory enemies. Tony Robinson's straight-faced, perfectly-timed reading doubles the fun.

The very young will listen with concentrated delight again and again to both the words and the music of a new series by Giles Andreae, of Purple Ronnie fame, and composer Chris Hoban. The first, Giraffes Can't Dance (Orchard Books, 30mins, £4.99) read by Hugh Laurie, is a leisurely rhyming story of how Gerald the Giraffe discovers all sorts of dances and his own kind of self-expression.

For tweenagers, Louise Rennison has provided three very successful diary novels, part Bridgette Jones, part Adriana Mole: young amazon.com reviewers are giving them five-star ratings. Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging (BBC Cover to Cover, c.4 hrs, £12.99, read by the author) is the first on audio. Listen to it for unnervingly acute insights into the reality of life at 14 today.

For the same sex and age-group, and just as much fun in a different way, is Annie Dalton's Winging It (Collins, 2hrs 30 mins, £7.99), read by Kellie Bright: the first in what will no doubt be an endless series, if not a TV staple, about fun-loving girls who die young and find they have become superangels in a heavenly academy dedicated to sorting out the world's problems by magical visitations. Run over in 2001 by a joyrider in a stolen car, Mel is sent on an assignment to wartime London. Great fun in a super-comic kind of way.

Now for a little real literature. Imelda Staunton's reading of Eva Ibbotson's award-winning Journey to the River Sea (Macmillan, c.3 hrs, £7.99) held me spellbound. It's the story of an orphan who goes to live in a remote settlement up the Amazon basin with avaricious relatives more interested in her fortune than her well-being. Unlike them, she becomes deeply involved in what the new world around her can teach her, making the most of it thanks to an unlikely ally, the strait-laced governess she has brought from England. This is a book whose characters live on in your head.

Finally, two fine unabridged fantasy classics. Younger children will love Penelope Keith's reading of Alf Prøysen's Little Old Mrs Pepperpot/Mrs Pepperpot Again (Cavalcade, 3hrs 25 mins, £16.99), and the whole family will enjoy Andrew Sachs reading Ian Fleming's only book for children, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Puffin, unabridged, 2hrs 15 mins, £7.99). Written for Fleming's son Casper when he was in hospital, it was inspired by the car owned by a friend, Prince Zborowski. If you have only ever seen the film, this is a revelation: taut story-telling by a master of the genre.