No. 36: The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson (1968)

Do you know what I love most about reading? You just never know when it's going to come in useful. Last year, for instance, I spent - in the course of my job as Fearless Investigative Reporter for a National Newspaper That Was Doing a Supplement On Unusual Mini-Breaks and Days Out - the most brilliant day at the National Birds of Prey Centre in Gloucester, watching and handling various hawks. In the afternoon, we sat on benches while one of the staff brought a selection of owls out for us to view. "Does anyone know anything about owls?" he asked the (primarily primary school-age) audience, who dutifully raised their hands and offered the knowledge that they were nocturnal and had very big eyes to help them see in the dark. Tcch! I thought to myself. Paltry facts! And I'm not even sure the second one is true. I raised my 30-year-old hand with pride. "Yes?" said our host. "They eat their food whole," I said proudly. "Very good!" he said. I beamed. I had restored all the kudos I had lost by being unable to swing the lure with anything approaching the proficiency of the average six-year-old boy and then some.

And how? Because when I was six I had gone to the trouble of reading The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, that's how. This is a story for younger readers, about a baby barn owl called Plop (and have you, incidentally, ever come across a more perfectly appropriate name for a character? What else could a fat and fluffy baby owl with "a beautiful heart-shaped ruff ... enormous, round eyes ... and very knackety knees" possibly be called?) who suffers from the eponymous affliction. In vain does his mother explain to him that he is a night bird. Plop wants to be a day bird. "You are what you are," says Mrs Barn Owl firmly. "Yes, I know," agrees Plop. "And what I are is afraid of the dark."

In the course of seven utterly beguiling chapters, however, including Dark is Exciting (in which Plop sees fireworks for the first time), Dark is Necessary (where he meets a little girl who explains to him about Father Christmas) and Dark is Wonderful (when he meets an astronomer who identifies the stars for him), Plop gradually loses his fear and eventually comes to feel that Dark is Super.

And to fuel all these adventures, Plop is fed a variety of delicious morsels, from voles to tiny fish, by his patient parents, all of which - ta dah! - nature dictates that he swallow whole. I also know, thanks to Plop's conversation with the little girl who knew that Dark is Necessary, that only tawny owls go tu-whit tu-whoo. But I kept that to myself in Gloucester. It doesn't do to overawe people.