The award winning artists and authors in these new picture books are gifted and wise. Their simple stories prompt fundamental questions about life. The Julia Donaldson and Axel Donaldson of Gruffalo fame give us Zog (Alison Green, £10.99) a charming dragon of little brain but blessed with luck. Donaldson values a good plot that takes you on an adventure. Zog, the biggest and keenest pupil in the class fails to win the golden star.

He can’t fly, roar nor breathe fire, despite a helpful little girl he meets. Is he up to the final task, ‘capturing a princess’? She is there for him, she’ll be his princess, a princess with a difference; together they opt out of battles and knights to become doctors. This gentle rhyming story, with its colourful supporting cast of dragons, highlights concerns we all have with humour and heart.

Tabby McTat (Alison Green, £6.99) is about companionship. Tabby is a busker’s cat, together they sing of “this and that”. One day he meets a gorgeous, glossy cat; while having “a cat-to-cat chat” the busker has an accident, lands in hospital and is lost to his beloved Tabby, who is taken in by a new family, finds a wife, has kittens but misses his busker friend. At last they are reunited, but he misses his wife, so his son takes his place.

Told from a cat’s viewpoint, this inventive tale is about family and the values passed on from one generation to the next.

Shirley Hughes’s stories ‘grow out of real situations’; for her, family life is ‘high drama’. In Don’t Want to Go (Random House, £10.99) Lucy’s mum is ill, dad must go to work, so she must go to Melanie’s house. Despite her resistance, she is slowly won over by Melanie’s gentle persuasion, the baby and their friendly dog. Carefully observed, this perceptive story is told with warmth and mastery of line.

Known for his Gorilla stories, Anthony Browne brings us My Mum (Doubleday £10.99), a companion volume to My Dad, unsentimental yet moving. Mum could be a film star or a corporate boss; instead ‘she’s a brilliant cook, gardener, singer and, best of all: “She loves me”.