Jonadab and Rita (3+), by Shirley Hughes
Bodley Head, £10.99; 32pp Buy the book here

Spells (3+), by Emily Gravett
Macmillan, £10.99; 32pp Buy the book here

Bubble Trouble (4+), by Margaret Mahy and Polly Dunbar
Frances Lincoln, £11.99; 40pp Buy the book here

While parents may not exactly enjoy a magical time in the summer holidays, anyone who remembers their own childhood will know how special a time it is for children. This is when most of us, tired of trudging around museums, discovered public libraries and bookshops. Three of the loveliest picture books now appear to grace the end of summer.

Shirley Hughes is one of the greatest writers and illustrators for pre-schoolers that we have. The creator of the endearing, enduring Alfie series, she understands a small child's world to perfection; I think I became a better mother thanks to her Lucy and Tom series. This one is about a more modern child, Minnie, who hardly ever sees her parents and is brought up by a nanny in a flat in Notting Hill. Her best toy is an old, worn grey donkey whose secret is that he can fly.

Alas, Minnie takes him for granted, and the bored, neglected donkey decides “one midsummer moon” to fly into Holland Park. Here, in a charming echo of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Arthur Rackham's Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, he encounters the fairies and their Queen. (Children who love fairy pictures will be ravished by these.) Jonadab has such fun that when he finds Minnie hasn't missed him he returns once again to the park - only to find the fickle fairies have forgotten him too. It's up to another neglected toy to put things to rights and reunite the lost donkey with his sorrowful owner.

Oh, how sad and cross this lovely book made me - not because Hughes hasn't given us one of her best books in an oeuvre outstanding for its sense of joy, beauty and love, but because it all rings so true. Substitute child for donkey, and you have just the way far too many children feel, especially in the holidays. The expressions on Jonadab's face - contented, bored, defiant, amazed, lonely, wretched and utterly despairing - are all too familiar.

Emily Gravett continues with her own quirky brand of inventiveness and mischief, following on from Meerkat Mail, The Odd Egg and the sublime Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears. Spells is a variant of the old game of mix and match, as a frog finds a book of spells and tries to turn himself into a handsome prince.

Once again, Gravett's graphic brio will have children and adults laughing as, ever-hopeful, her ambitious frog gets into a muddle. As a metaphor for learning to read, it's even more clever than it first appears, with rabbits, snakes, doves and newts appearing in response to hocus-pocus, before the naked prince appears, a frog tattooed on his bulgy bum, and finds his princess. Alas, there is a twist ...

Margaret Mahy is another great children's author, ranging from her Carnegie-winning novel The Changeover to picture books about order and chaos. Bubble Trouble, gracefully illustrated by Polly Dunbar, is about a girl who blows a magic bubble around her baby brother that carries him off, causing havoc until sibling love wins over rivalry.

This kind of nonsense never fails to delight, and although it's uncannily similar in scansion and concept to another book called Rachel Fister's Blister by Amy MacDonald, it is no less fun for all that. All three books are about something lost and found; if you get all three for the remainder of the holiday, you may just about survive.

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