Another Epic Post About Children’s Books

Now for the list of children’s books which are not classics, but which, in my very humble opinion, should be.  It’s a long list by the way.  You might want snacks:

 

Sabriel by Garth Nix – This is the first in a trilogy (the others being Lirael and Abhorsen).  If you like Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, you should read this. I have to say, and this is probably blasphemy, I loved these more.  They are about a world like ours but with a dividing line between the normal world and the magical world. Once you go over into the magical world, all bets are off. The magic starts leaking across and the evil magic which is causing chaos, must be contained.  It is up to Sabriel, a fledgling necromancer to put the evil back where it belongs. Utterly, utterly gripping. You will not be able to put these down.  Buy the whole set so you don’t have to worry about waiting for the shops to open when you’ve finished the first one.

 

Across The Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn – This is the first in a trilogy, and there is a second trilogy in progress.  They are set in a kind of fantasy world based on feudal Japan and are about the political machinations between warring tribes and their use of a kind of unclean caste who practice magic and nefarious deeds to alter the balance of power. They are bloody, violent and have quite graphic sexual content, so if you’re buying them for kids, make sure they’re for late teens or you will be either dealing with lots of nightmares or answering lots of difficult questions at breakfast.

 

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy – These were recommended by my daughter Tilly, whose teacher was reading them to her class at school.  This is the first in a series about a young girl who teams up with a skeleton detective called Skulduggery Pleasant after the death of her wealthy uncle in mysterious circumstances.  They are funny, very fast paced, but also very violent.  You have been warned.  Having said that, Tallulah likes them, but she has been brought up on a diet of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

 

The Owl Service by Alan Garner – Garner writes supernatural adventure stories based on traditional folk tales.  They are quite horrifying, not because they are graphic, but because he is the king of making things that should be normal sound utterly menacing.  All his books are superb, this is one of the most chilling, about, of all things, a haunted tea service!

 

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie – I dislike Rushdie’s writing for adults, but this is a wonderful adventure story about a boy who goes on an adventure to find out why all the story teller’s inspiration is drying up.

 

Ottoline and the Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell – Riddell is best known as an illustrator but here he pens his own delightful story about Ottoline, a young girl who lives on her own because her parents are explorers.  She has Mr. Monroe, a hairy creature who her parents found in a bog in Norway to protect her, and spends her time building collections and solving mysteries. The illustrations are superb and me and the kids just love it.  There are more of them too, which is a blessing.

 

Simon and The Witch by Margaret Stuart Barry – These are fabulous stories about Simon, a school boy who makes friends with what he thinks is a lonely old woman. It turns out that she is a bona fide witch who eats slug sandwiches and has a mad cat who destroys furniture for fun.  Simon and the witch get up to all kinds of mischief and are just generally brilliant and anarchic. There are a few books in the series and I love it best when the witch goes to school and is known as Mrs. Err because the teacher doesn’t know what to make of her.

 

Grimble and Grimble at Christmas by Clement Freud – These are fantastic books about a young boy called Grimble whose parents nip off overseas and leave him a message on the back of a biscuit.  Grimble has to use his innate cunning to stay alive and fed until his parents return to claim him.

 

The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall – This is the story of Chas McGill and his friends, who during World War II get to play real planes when an enemy bomber is shot down over some woods and they find it, and the injured German pilot.  There is a sequel about U-Boats called Full Fathom Five, which is not quite as good.  Chas McGill also pops up in some of Westall’s short stories.  All Westall’s books are excellent, scary ghost stories that really set your spine tingling.

 

The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown – I read and re-read this book as a child.  It is an old fashioned story about a group of children who get into amateur dramatics and find an abandoned theatre which they restore in order to put on their plays.  There was at least one more book about their adventures, but I believe it is out of print.

 

The Ghost of Thomas Kempe by Penelope Lively – A funny rather than spooky book about a boy who discovers that the new housing development his family have just moved to is being haunted by the ghost of the man who used to own the land hundreds of years ago.

 

The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton – This book is about disaffected American teenagers getting into things like crime and violence and hanging round on street corners being tough and moody.  I loved it.  Hinton wrote it when she was a teenager herself, along with several other books in the same vein.  It’s not for the faint hearted but if you liked Marlon Brando in on the Waterfront and want to see what he would have done when he was fourteen and in a street gang, this is the book for you.

 

The Undertaker’s Gone Bananas by Paul Zindel – Zindel is also an American who writes for teenagers.  These are darkly tragic and yet funny books.  In this one, two kids think that the man who lives underneath them might have gone mad and killed his wife and they aim to expose him without being killed themselves.

 

The Otterbury Incident by Cecil Day Lewis – As well as finding the time to be Poet Laureate and being the dad of Daniel Day Lewis, he also wrote this book about gangs of boys roaming about having adventures. It is very old fashioned but I loved it as a child and read it hundreds of times.  The illustrations by Edward Ardizzone are just lovely too.

 

Superfudge by Judy Blume – Another classic American author. I loved Superfudge and the other Fudge books because they were so funny. Fudge is a naughty little boy with a long suffering older brother called Peter. Fudge is always doing terrible things like trying to eat his brother’s turtles and generally being very good value as long as you’re not actually related to him.

 

Forever by Judy Blume – I felt that Ms. Blume needed two categories because her books are so divided into young readers and teen readers. Forever, which is the first book about sex I actually read, is definitely in the teen reader category and describes a young girl’s experience of sex with her boyfriend for the first time. I read it avidly and then re-read it about 100 times.  Her other books are good too, but I believe this is what is known as a seminal work of teenage fiction.

 

Nurse Matilda Goes To Town by Christianna Brand – There are a whole series of Nurse Matilda books and they are very like Mary Poppins, but more funny. Nurse Matilda is an ugly, magical nursemaid who visits naughty children and makes them good with her magical ways.  If you liked Nanny Mcphee you will like these because these were the books that Emma Thompson adapted for the film.

 

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden – This is a story about a young girl called Nona who is sent from India to live with her aunt and uncle in England. She feels very isolated and alone until she is sent a present of two Japanese dolls called Miss Happiness and Miss Flower and a Japanese baby doll called Little Peach. Nona and the other children in the family make a Japanese doll’s house to make Miss Happiness and Miss Flower feel at home. It is a delightful book and has the instructions on how to make your own Japanese doll’s house in the back.  I spent many long and fruitless hours trying to persuade my parents to make me a Japanese doll’s house.

 

Private – Keep Out! By Gwen Grant – This is the story of a young girl in a poor mining family who is writing her own diary after being given a huge pile of paper as a present to try and keep her out of trouble. Set just after the war it is funny and touching and another one of those read and re-read books. There are several in the series but I think they are all out of print now.

 

Arabel and Mortimer by Joan Aiken – Arabel is a young girl whose father is a taxi driver.  One night he knocks down a raven in the middle of the road and takes it home. Arabel falls in love with it and calls it Mortimer. Mortimer is extremely naughty and does things like eat the stairs and swallow diamonds. He can only say ‘Nevermore!’ There are several of these books. They have fantastic illustrations by Quentin Blake.

 

The Box of Delights by John Masefield -  Kay is a young boy who finds himself drawn into a magical Christmas adventure, travelling back in time and escaping a menacing villain with the help of an old man with a musical box.  Just wonderful.

 

Agaton Sax and The Criminal Doubles by Nils-Olof Franzen – Agaton Saxx is a Swedish detective who in between running a newspaper and looking after his sausage dog has to save the world from the evil gangs of Octopus Scott and Julius Mosca.  These books used to utterly delight me as a child. They are out of print now, but I am hoping that someone will see sense soon and reprint them, preferably with the original Quentin Blake illustrations.

 

Easy Connections by Liz Berry – This brings back such memories of being about sixteen.  It is a teen romance about a young woman at art school who falls in love with a rock star called Paul Devlin.  I haven’t read it for years, and am loathe to in case it does not live up to the hype of my fevered remembrances, but oh how I loved it.

 

My Darling Villain by Lynne Reid Banks – My first proper ‘romance’ book. It must be so very dated now.  All about a good girl from a sensible family who starts going out with a ne’er do well who rides motorbikes. The scandal!

 

Pennington’s Seventeenth Summer by K. M. Peyton – This is the first of a trilogy about a young man who is a gifted but troubled musician and the mistakes he makes in his youth that could lead to his talents being squandered.

 

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith – A wonderful story about Cassandra, living in a castle with her mad relatives, poor as church mice and dreaming of romance and escape.  A teenage version of Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford but more gentle and just lovely.

 

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh – Harriet is a young girl obsessed with being a spy and writing down everyone’s secrets.  Her book of secrets falls into the wrong hands and she pays the price. A funny and painful book.

 

Eloise by Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight – There are lots of books in the Eloise series. They are all delicious.  The language is delicious and the illustrations are just divine.  Eloise is a young girl who lives with Nanny at the Plaza Hotel in New York.  She shares her observations of life with us, and we are all the wiser for it.  She has a pug dog and a pet turtle called Skipperdee and she likes to just skibble all over the place.

 

Tales of Polly and the Hungry Wolf by Catherine Storr – The traditional tale with the roles reversed. Polly gets her own back on the wolf every time.

 

Ordinary Jack by Helen Cresswell – This is the first of the Bagthorpe Saga in which Jack, an ordinary child, struggles to cope with his eccentric and gifted family, all of whom have strings to their bow and foster insanity as a positive character trait.  Other excellent books by Cresswell include The Piemakers, which is about rival pie making families making the best pie.for the royal family, and Lizzie Dripping, about a girl who encounters a witch.

Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster – A story about a young American girl in an orphanage who gets a wealthy patron. She writes him letters about her life at the orphanage, which is how the book progresses. It is absolutely lovely and there is a sequel called Dear Enemy which is just as wonderful.

 

The Size Spies by Jan Needle – This and its sequel Another Fine Mess are fantastic adventure stories about George and Cynthia who live with a mad professor who first shrinks them and then sends them back in time.

 

Bogwoppit by Ursula Moray Williams – The Bogwoppit is a strange creature with wings and fur who gets washed up in a strange house and is rescued by a small girl called Samantha.

 

The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley – A fantastically magical and funny adventure about Prince Abu Ali, the son of Aladdin and his quest to save The Land of Green Ginger.

 

A Sterkarm Handshake by Susan Price – A rivetingly good adventure story which I first read as an adult about the disasters of modern technology.  FUP is a company in need of resources that are costing more and more in the modern world. One of their scientists invents a time tunnel which allows them to travel back five centuries to when the land is unspoiled and pillage resources instead of paying for them. Unfortunately they get mixed up with a bunch of warring clans to disastrous results for both the past and the future.

 

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke – Maggie’s father is a book binder.  He loves books but refuses to ever read to Maggie.  They lead a peripatetic life which is upset one day by the arrival of a stranger and the revelation that Maggie’s father has the gift or curse of making the worlds he reads about in books come alive as he reads them.

 

Stone Heart by Charlie Fletcher – This is the first in a trilogy set in London in which a young boy who accidentally breaks a piece of stone from a monument at the Natural History Museum gets sucked into an alternative world in which all the statues in London come to life and are fighting a war.