Meisjes om te zoenen (Kiss the Girls) is a wonderful variation on the Grimms’ fairytale of the frog prince. The little frog, looking for a sweetheart, welcomes a bunch of beautifully dolled-up girl animals to his castle.

In her light-hearted tone, Maranke Rinck tells a cleverly devised relay story, portraying every girl, each in a different room, with all her ambitions and her nerves: what will the frog prince turn into if he kisses the girl of his choice?

Maranke Rinck and Martijn van der Linden’s new picture book is based on a classic oriental legend. Tortoise, Bat, Octopus, Bird and Goat are sleeping in their hammock high above the ground. Suddenly they hear a sound – something is rustling in the pitch-black night. The animals go to investigate and each of them thinks they can feel something different, as they all see things from their own point of view. So they’re very surprised when the mysterious rustling turns out to be not a terribly big tortoise or a gigantic goat, but just an elephant.

One day, an elephant appears in the sea, just bobbing along. None of the sea creatures know where it’s come from or even whether it really is an elephant. ‘Elephants don’t exist,’ says one. ‘Yes, they do,’ says another, ‘but they don’t swim. They fly.’ Another one claims that elephant is what you get behind your fins when you don’t scrub properly.

Very few writers can do what Bibi Dumon Tak does: write outstanding literary non-fiction for children. Anyone who is at all sceptical should read Winterdieren, a book that will whisk you away to the most remote areas of our world: the North and South Poles, ‘the mother and father of the earth’.

Rembrandt’s The Night Watch is the number one attraction at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. But, when you take a good look at this painting, what do you actually see? Hidden among all the fine gentlemen, there is a girl. The story that Schutten tells about her takes young readers on an appealing journey to the world of Rembrandt and his best-known work.

The Other Rabbit opens with a double-page spread of match-the-pairs cards. Only one of the cards is turned over to show a picture.

Thanks to Anne Frank and her diary, the story of the occupation of the Netherlands in World War II is known all over the world. Anyone who wants to find out more about the subject can read books by hundreds of authors. However, many of those accounts are missing something essential: how it really feels to find yourself, from one day to the next, living in a world of danger and uncertainty.

First there was the innovative Memorykonijn (published in English as The Other Rabbit), a picture book based on the famous memory game, and now Maranke Rinck (b. 1976) and Martijn van der Linden (b. 1979) have come up with a playful way to turn the Chinese tangram puzzle into a book.

There are many stories in the Jewish, Islamic and Arab traditions about the wise King Solomon. Following Solomon’s adage that ‘a good word makes the heart glad’, Lida Dijkstra has distilled out of this tangle a colourful fairy tale that, together with Martijn van der Linden’s beautiful, eloquent full-page illustrations, evokes the atmosphere of the Thousand and One Nights and positively begs to be read out loud.

Driven by their relentless curiosity and unbridled fantasy, Edward van de Vendel and Martijn van der Linden present the okapi as a “splendid and silent mystery animal”. Remarkable facts about one of the last large mammals to be discovered alternate with small okapi stories and cheerful little okapi poems. Van de Vendel’s words are interspersed with Van der Linden’s striking and original illustrations, which show a remarkable range of styles composition and atmosphere.

The idea is simple, in this fourth part of a series by Joukje Akveld. It’s a book with the same question on each page: which of the four animals on the right owns the tail on the left? You find out the answer by turning the page.

In the world of books, there have been many calls for more attention to be paid to diversity. Erna Sassen’s book is a laudable response. This original story about the loner Boaz, who is so proud when the new girl, Aïsha, comes to sit by him at school, shows that a friend is a friend, and appearances don’t matter.

Ellis has two dads, and she loves popcorn. One day, when she puts some popcorn kernels in the microwave, two little arms and two little legs come popping out of one of them. Ellis never knew pieces of popcorn could look so angry, but this one does. He introduces himself as Bob Popcorn.

‘Poems that will be of some use to you’ is the subtitle of this textually and visually multi-faceted collection of poetry by Edward van de Vendel and Martijn van der Linden.

Nils Holgersson is part of a series of legendary characters that many people know and love. The red-capped elf who crosses Sweden on the back is an icon. He owes his immortality to the sense of adventure and the imaginative language of Selma Lagerlöf, as seen once again in these beautiful new adaptation of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson (1906).

For as long as 15-year-old Joshua can remember, Zivan has been his best friend. But then she moves to Iraq, where her father marries her off to her cousin. Joshua has no further contact with her. This book reads like a cry of despair, in which all his pain, anguish and frustration resound.

An article in The Jakarta Post about the exploitation of an Indonesian boy as a miracle healer inspired Hans Hagen to write this book. His starting point: ‘A lot is possible in real life, but far more is possible in stories.’ The result is a playful tale about a girl hit by lightning who comes round with a stone in her hand, which has healing powers. She is then used by her family and other villagers for their own gain.