The Count of Monte Christo, by Alexandre Dumas; The Swiss Family Robinson, by J.D Wyss (Puffin Classics, £3.99 each in UK)

Monte Christo is much too long and involuted for junior consumption, so this: is a condensed version; those who want it in full are recommended to use the OUP edition. Dumas's storytelling powers survive the amputation reasonably well. The Swiss Family Robinson are an insufferably moralistic, petit bourgeois lot, but the outcast on an island theme appears to: have a perennial fascination, even if Defoe, Marryat and others did it better.