But it hasn’t always been like this – far from it. A century and a half ago writing for children was dominated by a tiny number of publications with heavy-handed educational or moral agendas; nowadays children have the same range of choice as adults: there’s sci-fi for children, historical fiction for children, fantasy for children, gritty realism for children, there are comic novels and controversial novels and light and frothy relationship books, adventure stories and horror stories, hard-hitting books about drugs and abuse, as well as (of course) stories about fluffy bunnies and boarding schools (with or without wizards). So how did this massive change come about?

You could argue that it was Alice, appearing in public in 1865, that made all the difference.

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland was not created for publication – it was a story told to entertain particular children, and only later was it suggested to Carroll that he publish it. (Markedly different from Through The Looking-Glass, which was written specifically for publication.) Most of the books that followed had the same sorts of origins. JM Barrie wrote the story of Peter Pan for the Llewellyn-Davies boys, children of friends of his; Beatrix Potter created Peter Rabbit and his fellow characters in her letters to the children of her friends and family. AA Milne wrote Winnie-the-Pooh for his son, Christopher Robin Milne.

(Beatrix Potter and AA Milne were only two of the countless writers of animal stories that have remained consistently popular – think of Wind In The Willows, Watership Down and, more recently, the books of Dick King-Smith.)

Back to school

Then there were the great schoolboy heroes – first Richmal Crompton’s trouble-prone William Brown and his gang of Outlaws, then Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings and his friends. The Jennings books were for years the archetypal boarding-school series, at least until a certain Harry Potter arrived for his first term at Hogwarts…

After William and Jennings came the Oxford professors – JRR Tolkien with his brilliantly imagined Middle Earth books, The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings; and CS Lewis and his seven books exploring an imaginary land called Narnia, a series whose echoes of Christian mythology may seem heavy-handed to some adults but tend to be blithely ignored by its enchanted young readers. Tolkien in particular bred extraordinary devotion in fans of his books, and with Peter Jackson’s film trilogy the world of Middle Earth and its characters are as popular now as they have ever been.

Since the days of Tolkien fantasy has only flourished further – the Chrestomanci books of Diana Wynne Jones (who at Oxford studied under both Tolkien and Lewis) and Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising series remain popular several decades after their first publication. And alongside the fantasy comes the vivid and imaginative historical fiction of Geoffrey Trease, then Rosemary Sutcliff, and later Joan Aiken, and the varied works of Philippa Pearce (author of Minnow on the Say and Tom’s Midnight Garden) and many others.

By now, the idea of writing books for children didn’t seem so silly. Suddenly it was possible – not merely to tell stories to some child of your acquaintance and publish them, but actually to write for publication – to be a professional children’s writer. Until this time the notion of making a living from such things was practically unthinkable, though with a notable exception: the massively prolific and massively popular (and pretty profitable) author of the Famous Five and Secret Seven series, Enid Blyton.

Roald Dahl was one of the most successful children’s writers of recent decades. With a fine instinct for what children really want to read about, he created worlds where cunning kids outwitted mean and often gruesome adults. These were worlds that children loved, of course.

Children's books come of age

One of the most striking changes in recent years is the number of great writers producing books aimed specifically for teenagers. Twenty or 30 years ago, the only books you’d find in a bookshop that were aimed directly at teenagers would have been limited to a few things by Judy Blume, Robert Cormier, Paul Zindel and SE Hinton (all, as it happens, American). These few apart, readers were expected to stop reading children’s books (Enid Blyton) and jump straight on to books for adults (Sherlock Holmes, Jane Austen,…) with no bridge.

But since the publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 there has been a rapid rise in books for this market. And now some of the best writers around are writing just this sort of book – writers like David Almond, Aidan Chambers, Melvin Burgess, Geraldine McCaughrean, Kevin Brooks, Jan Mark and Philip Pullman – their "market-share" grows rapidly from year to year, and their grip on the imaginations of their readers does too.

Which brings us to the present – to the Harry Potters and Alex Riders and Tracy Beakers and Artemis Fowls, to Pullman and Almond and Anne Fine and countless others. Today the UK publishes several thousand new children’s books every year. What would Lewis Carroll have made of that?