For Robert Dunbar, 25 years of reviewing Irish books has allowed him to chart the genre while discovering his favourites: Eoin Colfer, Siobhán Parkinson, Roddy Doyle and Sam McBratney are among the writers of the stand-out titles

Twenty-five years ago, on October 29th, 1988, I began reviewing children’s books for The Irish Times. It has been an opportunity not just to read and comment on a huge number of books but also to trace the way the genre has evolved, both in Ireland and beyond. It seems an appropriate time to take a retrospective glance at some aspects of this evolution and to single out for special recommendation some of the books that have impressed me most. (Where Irish children’s books are under discussion I must point out that, as I have no Irish, my concern here is solely with writing in English.)
By the late 1980s and on into the 1990s Irish children’s writing and publishing had, after a long period of relative nonactivity, established themselves as significant players on the local literary scene, certainly where the quantity of material appearing was concerned. (Questions of quality came later.) In 1993, for example, some 60 children’s titles appeared from some 15 Irish publishers; 20 years on, thanks largely to our economic downturn, these figures would be radically different. There have always been Irish children’s writers who have published abroad, but in recent years their number has grown dramatically, provoking speculation about how this development has affected the thematic and stylistic aspects of their work.
The reputation of several of our writers has moved from the merely local to the international. Eoin Colfer, Derek Landy and Michael Scott, with, respectively, their Artemis Fowl, Skulduggery Pleasant and Nicholas Flamel novels, are globally successful, as are the picture-book texts of Martin Waddell and the horror series of Darren Shan. Additionally, some individual books have attracted universal notice. Among these are John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Marita Conlon-McKenna’s Under the Hawthorn Tree and Sam McBratney’s Guess How Much I Love You.
This acclaim extends to a number of our writers and illustrators creating picture books, an area that 25 years ago barely existed. PJ Lynch’s The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey and When Jessie Came Across the Sea have won the Greenaway Medal while Waddell has earned the Hans Christian Andersen award. Currently, the prolific Oliver Jeffers draws widespread attention for his idiosyncratic art and storylines.
Young-adult fiction, after a very slow (and not particularly distinguished) start, has begun to address contemporary adolescence much more realistically, a development that sees literary and societal change proceeding simultaneously. As the boundaries between childhood, adolescence and adulthood dissolve, the possibilities for all sorts of crossover will multiply.
What, then, of the hundreds of Irish children’s books of the past 25 years? Here, in alphabetical order of title, are 12 that continue to make an impact well into a third or fourth reading.

via The book reviewer’s favourite books for children – Book News | Literature & Books Reviews & Headlines |The Irish Time – Sat, Oct 19, 2013.