With book sales taking a hammering, and people being more choosy about what they buy, publishers are eager – now more than ever – to push books that have cross-generational appeal. Books that parents can sneak a look at while the kids are doing their homework. Fables that work on one level for kids, and on a mythic level for adults. Books that engage on the kind of emotional plane that some adult novels can only aspire to. And so, in the wake of the Potter and Twilight sagas, here are 10 of the best books to get all ages squabbling this Christmas over who gets to read them first.

Tales from Outer Suburbia, by Shaun Tan (Templar Publishing, £12.99)

Australian illustrator and writer Shaun Tan, is a master at combining the mythic, the bizarre, and the everyday. His dreamlike work manages the feat of being both unsettling and strangely life-affirming; and after reading it you'll never look at trees, cars, or garden lawns in the same way again. 'Eric', a wonderful short story about a very odd foreign-exchange student, manages to challenge the reader's prejudices, and deliver a lesson in humility with a final breathtaking page. It's typically brilliant stuff from Tan, and marks him out as one of the finest storytellers around.

The Gates, by John Connolly (Hodder and Stoughton, £12.99)

The hero of Connolly's book for kids is a young boy called Samuel Johnson who happens to have a dog called Boswell. Together they have to contend with the opening of the gates of Hell in a normally quiet suburb. The book starts off with a marvellous description of the Big Bang, and then mixes magic and physics with a tale that is both touching and funny. Some of the current crop of children's fantasy novelists could learn a thing or two from Connolly, who delivers a layered and wonderfully entertaining story filled with ectoplasmic beings, demons, and the Hadron Collider.

The Magician's Elephant, by Kate Di Camillo and Yoko Tanaka (Walker Books, £8.99)

In Newberry Award winner Kate Di Camillo's new book, orphan Peter Augustus learns from a fortune teller that his fate is intertwined with that of an elephant conjured by a magician. Yoko Tanaka's illustrations have a subdued dusky feel. They're atmospheric and haunting, and peopled by elegant vulnerable characters in star-lit, snowbound landscapes strewn with fog lamps and the sense that night is approaching. All of this adds to the book's quality as a fable in which the writing and illustration are matched in both poise and empathy.

Season of Secrets, by Sally Nicholls (Scholastic, £6.99)

Last year, Nicholls' Ways to Live Forever was a gut-wrenching, yet beautifully balanced tale about mortality and loss. In her follow-up, Season of Secrets, she returns to the same theme. After the death of their mother, Molly and her sister Hannah have been sent to live with their grandparents in a small village.

In echoes of Whistle Down the Wind, Molly becomes convinced that there's a man hiding in a nearby barn. The story weaves the myth of the Green Man together with Molly's loss in an intelligent and sensitive book that explores how we relate to the world through stories.

Jim, by Hilaire Belloc and Mini Grey (Jonathan Cape, £12.99)

Or Jim Who Ran Away From His Nurse And Was Eaten By A Lion – a title that tells you all you need to know about this, one of Belloc's more infamous cautionary tales. Illustrator Grey adds more to the tale with drawings that are sharp and knowing, giving the tale some added bite (if you'll pardon the pun). Part pop-up book, it contains a witty map/guidebook to the zoo in which Jim meets his grisly end. No details are spared, and some parents might baulk at the final image of a headless boy, but sometimes it's no harm to test the boundaries.

Leon and the Place Between, by Angela McAllister and Graham Baker-Smith (Templar Publishing, £5.99)

The master of collage himself, Dave McKean, speaks highly of this book. It's easy to see why. Leon and his friend go to a magic show. Leon is a bit of a sceptic but soon changes his tune when he enters a magic box and arrives "Somewhere Else". The story is sumptuously illustrated with painting, collage, and gold filigree throughout. Each page is a joy with something to explore in every nook and cranny.

Don Quixote, retold by Martin Jenkins and Chris Riddell (Walker Books, £16.99)

Walker Books has a whole series of adaptations of reliable old classics with the added bonus of some fine illustrations. Reading its version of Don Quixote, you wonder why nobody thought of giving the gig to Chris Riddell before now. His gangly, angular, hapless-looking characters are perfectly in tune with the comic absurdities of Cervantes's creation. Quixote makes his way across 16th century Spain with his faithful sidekick Sancho, and his lugubrious-looking horse. Jenkins' witty prose is an added pleasure.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, by Jeff Kinney (Puffin, £4.99)

Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are a guilty subversive pleasure for many parents. They're written in journal form on what looks like a copybook by their eponymous hero, middle-school geek Greg Heffley. In Book Four, Greg wants to spend his summer holidays inside with the curtains drawn playing computer games, but his mother has other ideas. Kinney's characters are cartoonish, anarchic, and spend their time struggling to break free of their many foibles. Greg's observations on modern life are just the right side of satiric for parents, and the right side of the ridiculous for kids. These books look deceptively simple, but they work on many hilarious levels.

Tommy Storm and the Galactic Knights, by AJ Healy (Quercus, £6.99)

Tommy Storm and his four friends are being trained as Galactic Knights in order to save the universe from impending doom. Along the way, they have to deal with their personal conflicts and problems, while hurtling frenetically through an iconoclastic fictional universe of their own, mixing the best of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Star Wars and every mock comic space opera in between. Groan-inducing puns aside (there's a villain here called A Sad Bin Liner), this is an enjoyable romp, full of fizz and humour.

Cosmic, by Frank Cottrell Boyce (Macmillan, £6.99)

The multi-talented Frank Cottrell Boyce is one of the finest and most inventive writers of the past 20 years. Most of his work starts with a 'what if' scenario, and then subjects it to rigorous emotional and intelligent examination, resulting in books which are always invigorating. Cosmic follows the adventures of Liam, a young boy set adrift on a rocket in space. It's a very funny book, and also very moving. Liam engages the reader from the very first page, and the attention of parents and children alike will find it almost impossible to stop listening to his matter-of-fact narrative voice.