ONE of the most stirring and poignant picture books out this season is, as is often the case, not a storybook, but a work of non-fiction. The nature writer Robert Macfarlane has teamed up with artist Jackie Morris to produce The Lost Words (Hamish Hamilton, £20), an illustrated lexicon of names from nature that aims to bring to children a language – acorn, heather, lark, heron, starling – that he believes we are fast losing.

And he has reason: the book was prompted by a study by Cambridge University in which researchers found that 8-11 year olds were more likely to recognise the fantastic creatures from the Pokemon game than common wildlife species.

Subtitled “A spell book” this giant tome contains not only beautiful illustrations but a haunting series of poems that read like a summoning back of the wild. Pages are interspersed in which flora or fauna are missing – telegraph wires, for instance, waiting for starlings to sit upon them – as if to say that if we lose these words we risk losing the nature itself. A book in which every page seems like an act of love.

There are other gems too from the non-fiction picture book sector. Curiosity: The Story Of A Mars Rover, by Markus Motum (Walker, £15), which tells the, delightfully anthropomorphised, story of the real-life lonely rover which in 2012 started its roam around Mars; The Picture Atlas: An Incredible Journey, by author Simon Holland and illustrator Jill Calder (Bloomsbury, £14.99), which brings the world to vivid life, incorporating history, wildlife and geography, in its riotous drawings.

Meanwhile, even as nature seems to be disappearing from our everyday vocabulary, wildlife characters continue to dominate fiction picture books – sometimes through reality-grounded tales of animal life, others in fables that are entertainingly fantastic.

Among those that doesn’t stray too far from reality is Little Seal, by Benedict Blathwayt (BC Books, £6.99), which tells the story, through charming illustrations, of a young seal which gets separated from its family during a storm and has to fend for itself alone in the oceans. A comfort for infants who fear the big world with all its strangeness.

The Wolf, The Duck And The Mouse by Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett (Walker, £12.99), creators of Sam And Dave Dig A Big Hole, however, is fabulously far-fetched. A hilarious and surreal story of a duck and a mouse who find themselves unlikely companions inside a wolf’s belly after being swallowed by the beast, it feels like an instant classic. Duck and Mouse do their best to get on with life inside there, which, in fact doesn’t seem to be too bad – there’s a nice dining table, and plenty of food, courtesy of the ravenous wolf. As Duck says, "I live well!" A witty lesson in how to make the most of disaster.

Sometimes, of course, only a human character will suffice. Maggie’s Mittens, the debut book by Coo Clayton, with illustrations by Alison Soye (Black and White, £6.99), tells one of those stories to which almost every child will relate – that of a girl who doesn’t really like wearing something she is made to wear. In this case it’s her mittens, which are too hot and “fuzzy”. Hence, she keeps trying to give them away at landmarks around Scotland, including Greyfriar’s Bobby, the Kelpies, and to a piper and some golfers. It’s not all that surprising to find out that frustrated Maggie is a real girl, whose author mother Coo Clayton was moved to write by the experience of endlessly picking up the mittens her daughter didn’t want to wear.

For children of reading age, there’s a bumper harvest this autumn. Much-anticipated has been The Wizards Of Once (Hodder, £12.99), in which Cressida Cowell, the author of the How To Train Your Dragon series delivers a whole new, fantastic world, ditching Vikings and dragons for wizards and warriors. There’s nothing Harry Potterish, however, about this rollercoaster wizard tale, set in “a British Isles so old it doesn’t know it is the British Isles yet.” The book bristles with rambunctious energy and humour, and feels as if it has been slapped down on the page with glee and mischief. Even Cowell’s drawings have a hurried, over-excited, scribbled quality. And its characters, Xar the wizard who has no magic, and Wish the warrior princess, who happens to have a magic spoon, are irresistible.

For those who love a good bit of a gothic silliness, the first of a new series, Curse Of The Werewolf Boy by Chris Priestley (Bloomsbury, £6.99), brings laughs and horrors just in time for Halloween. Mildew and Sponge are having a miserable time at ghastly boarding school, Maudlin Towers (the Hogwarts-inspired trend for such schools never seems to end), and then the school spoon goes missing, things start to go a bit strange, Vikings turn up, Christmas is almost cancelled, and a cracking adventure-mystery begins.

But what’s remarkable, particularly given Macfarlane’s thesis that children are losing touch with nature, is how much animals occupy a starring role even in the books for older children. Among them is The Wonderling (Walker, £14.99), the first children’s book by Mira Bartok, the author of The Memory Palace, a memoir about her mother’s schizophrenia. There’s a steampunk style to this quirky and remarkable novel, set in a fanciful version of Victorian London, in which the foundlings that arrive at Miss Carbunkle’s orphanage are actually hybrids of animals and humans. Among them is Number Thirteen, a fox-like creature with only one ear who, when a small bird, Trinket, arrives at the orphanage, begins to plot a plan for escape. Bartok's world has the feel of Dickens, with added fur and feathers, but also wonderful and whimsical illustrations to bring it alive.

Jacob Wegelius’s The Murderer’s Ape (Pushkin Children’s, £16.99) is narrated by its central animal character, the compelling Sally Jones, a gorilla which cannot speak but can understand human speech. She can also fix boat engines, restore musical instruments, and, so the story goes, has typewritten this murder mystery account of her attempt to clear the name of a friend, The Chief, who has been framed for murder and imprisoned. Among the pleasures in this twisting, turning tale of profound loyalty, are the black-and-white illustrations, at each chapter head, in which we're delivered, among other things, Sally, dressed in overalls, wearing a turban, chopping vegetables, and in the crow's nest of a boat.

The wild thing that features in the new novel by Frances Hardinge, author of the Costa award-winning, The Lie Tree, is a bear, though not a real one, rather its spirit. In a Skinful of Shadows (Macmillan, £12.99), Hardinge has delivered another stunning, fantastic and sweeping historical tale. Set in the English Civil War, it follows the story of the unfortunate Makepeace, illegitimate daughter of an aristocrat, who has inherited from her forebears a gift – the ability to be possessed by ghosts. After the death of her mother, the spirit that comes to inhabit her is an angry, snarling bear. Sharp, intelligent, visceral and utterly unputdownable.

Finally, the natural instinct might be to write off the debut Young Adult novel by wealthy supermodel and actress Cara Delevingne as just another celebrity cashing in on fame. But, Mirror, Mirror (Orion, £12.99), co-written with Rowan Coleman, is a riveting page-turner of a thriller, that both manages to plot out the mystery of a girl found almost-dead in the Thames and also explore, with sharpness and insight, the identity issues of teenagers today. Gender, sexuality, class, style, body image, are all in the melting pot here. But what’s most impressive is its exploration of gender identity, through first-person narrator Red, whose gender is only guessable at for the first half of the book. Whatever part is Delevingne and whatever Coleman, this is a book with dark passion and heart.