Let's begin at the end, on the night when, flying high above New York, the Blue Wonder's heart failed him for the third and final time.

In the grand and lazy tradition of end-of-year columnists everywhere, here are my personal favourite SFF young adult books of the decade. (Not, I hasten to add, a "best of" list. This is almost bound to reveal more about my reading prejudices than it is the relative quality of books on and off the list.)

I've been told there are cures, but what I've heard/always ends with a witch in the fire

During the height of last year's problems, readers came out of the World Wide woodwork to help support their favorite writers and artists, small publishers and arduous editors produced collections solely for charity, and satirical cartoonists championed toy drives for children's hospitals.