I lost half an hour last weekend in Argonaut Books at the foot of Leith Walk, and I’d happily have lost the whole afternoon. I came out with a couple of freshly bound books and some free spooky bookmarks, so get yourself down there if you’re in the market for a cracking new book and bookmark to match.

A bookshop crawl is one of my absolute favourite ways to spend an afternoon. Strolling between bookshops and coffee shops, taking in the sweet scent of roasted coffee beans and the hubbub of clattering crockery.

So I should probably own up to what I do for a living. I run a digital library for children.

Now I wholeheartedly believe that two things can be true. You can love and appreciate the feel and weight of a physical book between your palms and enjoy the convenience of a digital book.

I know that there are a lot of purists who believe that digital books ‘just aren’t the same’, my very own dad being one of them. They’re not the same. But they’re also not trying to serve the same purpose. There’s nothing like having a conversation with a loved one in person. But when thousands of miles stand between you, a phone call is a lovely thing to have.

All I can tell you is that I enjoy those Saturday afternoons as much as I enjoy reading my digital book on the train.

I taught English for ten years, three of them as Head of English at a SEND specialist school. I learnt that appreciating a good story doesn’t look the same for everyone. For some it’s listening to someone else read aloud, for others it’s through a sensory experience, an eye gaze or an audiobook.

Where Little Reads comes in is at eight o’clock on a Sunday night, when a paperback gets finished and the bookshops and libraries have shut. No screen is ever going to hand you a spooky bookmark, or put a book in your hands that you’d never have gone looking for. But it can give you an excellent story, which is at the heart of why we turn to books, isn’t it?

With that off my chest, these are five from our library that I’d hand an eight year old this autumn.

The Thames and Tide Club: The Secret City

by Katya Balen

Clem and her neighbours go mudlarking every Saturday, hunting along the river’s edge for clay pipes and old bottles. Then Clem drops a tangled loop of metal into her bucket, London starts cracking up, and the loop begins to glow gold.

Bridget Vanderpuff and the Baked Escape

by Martin Stewart

Bridget keeps lockpicks, a telescope and a bracelet of tiny books hidden in her enormous orange hair. She is the last child left at the Orphanage for Errant Childs, which is run by a woman who eats nothing but fishy sandwiches. It’s every bit as daft as it sounds, and wholesome with it.

Flying Fergus: The Wreck-It Race

by Sir Chris Hoy and Joanna Nadin

Yes, that Chris Hoy. Fergus is nine and bike-mad, and his cycling squad has got a bit big for its boots. Their new coach is a wheelchair basketball star who locks the bikes away, gets everyone doing yoga and signs them up for a race where every pair builds its own machine out of scrap.

The Orphans of St Halibut’s

by Sophie Wills

This is probably the darkest of the five but it will still make you laugh out loud. Three orphans have been living gloriously unsupervised since the library shelves came down on their horrible matron. They buried her under the vegetable garden. Now an inspector from DEATH, the Department for Education, Assimilation, Training and Health, is due on Friday.

Jim Reaper: Son of Grim

by Rachel Delahaye

This is the one for spooky bookmark season. Jim wants a Bazoom! scooter more than anything, and his dad, an accountant who is rubbish at maths, says no. So Jim sneaks into Dad’s office to change his mind. The office is behind a secret door and the wardrobe is full of black cloaks.

If one of these goes down well, I hope the next stop is a bookshop. I’ll be back on Leith Walk before long myself, with a physical book for bedtime and a book on my phone for the train home.

Hannah Rix

Co-founder, Little Reads
readingmate.co.uk/littlereads