A delightful recording of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories (Naxos pound;9.99) includes the “Merry Down” poem written to Josephine, “the daughter that was all to him”, who died while they were being written. Enjoy Geoffrey Palmer’s voice and some great music.

In “How the Rhino Got his Skin”, after the rhino-with-no-manners had eaten the Parsee’s cake, he left his smooth, comfortable skin by the water’s edge while he swam. In revenge, the Parsee filled it with cake crumbs, so now rhinos are bad-tempered and constantly scratching.

Kevin Crossley-Holland, along with James Macpherson and Patience Tomlinson, presents a narration of his own folk tales in The Magic Lands 2 (Orion Audio Books, pound;6.99). His timeless, magical tales come from a range of Britons, from those of Norfolk to the Northumberland Romanies.

In “Mossycoat”, the scullery maid with a magic coat of wishes who wins the son of the house reminds us of Cinderella, and in “The Baker’s Daughter” a baker-girl is turned into an owl for being unkind to a beggar.

In Jacqueline Wilson’s Lizzie Zipmouth (Cavalcade Story Cassettes pound;3.99, unabridged), Lizzie refuses to speak because she doesn’t want to be part of a stepfamily. When her stepdad, Sam, buys Lizzie her favourite ice-cream, she won’t give it a single lick; if he cooks dinner, she won’t eat it. After a visit to her stepbrothers’ Gran, with her attic full of dolls, Lizzie unzips and the family gradually knits together. The story is all the better for Sophie Aldred’s character voices.

Zelah Clarke’s narration of Nina Bawden’s Carrie’s War (BBC Cover to Cover, pound;10.99) keeps listeners spellbound for over four hours. Carrie and her young brother Nick have been evacuated to a coal-mining town in South Wales to live with Miss Evans and her harsh brother. Nearby is the warm kitchen at Druid’s Bottom, where Hepzibah looks after Mr Johnny, and the dying Mrs Gotobed is saving her best dress for the end. Old curses and family secrets are only part of the story.

Sal, the narrator in Jean Ure’s The Secret Life of Sally Tomato (Collins pound;8.99), is a 12-year-old boy. He has written the first arresting sentence of his novel (“I am a cockroach”); he’s obsessed by his surging hormones and the mysteries of girls’ cup sizes, and he uses his sister’s facial cleanser to make his hair spiky. His friend Bones has already kissed a girl, and Sal’s ambition is to kiss Lucy with the spun-silk hair-or, failing her, Carrie.

Even while Sal writes his tender Valentine poems for the undeserving Lucy, he is stalked by Harmony, the girl with the frizzy orange hair and the penchant for Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

John Pickard’s narration brings out all the comic and tragic turmoil of being 12.