Obscure children's books that you used to love

Tinkly. Lovely to have those memories though.

Glad it wasn't just me LauraChant .

I wonder if anyone else has read this book - I can't remember what it was called and no one I know has heard of it. It was about a girl in Victorian times (possibly) who found an antiques shop but everything she bought there was cursed. I remember she buys a glass bowl or something similar, and the person she buys it for ends up cutting their hand on it for example. It was pretty creepy for a children's book...

Can I also bid for The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden?

Oh and Fly By Night by K M Peyton (Flambards author)

SaguaroBlossom I've just looked at my copy of that Victorian tear jerker, Froggie's Little Brother - mine was presented to Alfred Blood, for Regular Attendance, Good Conduct and Progress in School Work during the year 1908! by Loughborough Education Committee. Is your copy as old?

The book I really love, and perhaps any Oz readers can help me out here, is my Puffin edition of The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay. Is that right that it's an Ozzie Children's Classic?

Ooh! Thank you, frances. I did eventually find a second-hand copy for a reasonable price (bonus: the same cover I remembered!). But I would love to buy it for other people's children, so glad to know.

All the Alan Garner books I've read have been genuinely scary, a bit too scary for me when I was a kid. I think it's the way he brings the creepy stuff into our world. There is a very real sense of danger.

Seventies kids TV drama was often creepy and scary too. Lots of supernatural and fantasty plots.

My DS loved the Bagthorpe saga, recently read to him. DH and he are currently enjoying the Voyage of QV66 :)

He did like King of the Copper Mountains too, as did I. Anyone read Robber Hopsika by the same author?

Green Smoke - yes
What a Mess - yes!!
Carbonel - tick

Has anyone but me read the Thirteen Days of Christmas by Jenny Overton? It's a lovely story imagining the origins of the carol - all starts with two children wanting to marry off their big sister, who's a terrible cook and rather bossy. Her suitor is very lovely but unimaginative and they think he should try and step it up a bit. So he starts sending round a partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves ...

She also wrote Creed Country and the Nightwatch Winter and I've never found anyone else who's read them.

No I felt the same MrsS. Particularly the Little Wooden Horse. So stoic in the face of misery piled on misery, especially down the mine!

Since the amazing success of my request about the children flying into the sun, I'm just going to drop this one in before I go to bed - no-one has ever found this for me and if any of my FB friends are here they will know who I am as I ask them periodically.

Girl has access to weird London Underground train which takes her to strange stations called things like Dome and Museum. Turns out she,s just having a breakdown and its a perfectly normal train going to places like St Paul's. She also has an imaginary friend called Mee. possibly.

Anyone?

Ooh, I loved the Taran the Wanderer books (Chronicles of Prydain?). I still think they are hugely underrated. I loved the stroppy princess and even considered Eillonwy as a name for DD (only briefly though since I'm not Welsh and don't know how to spell/pronounce it ).

And I'd forgotten all about the Garden Gang!

While I liked Gobbolino the Witch's Cat and the Little Wooden Horse books they always made me quite sad as a child as they seemed to travel from one miserable situation to the next. Maybe I am misremembering them though.

'The Satanic Mill' is published again under its original German title of 'Krabat' and there's a film too I think.

Interesting. I read Elidor by Alan Garner - aimed at around 10 year olds I should think - recently which was really quite scary. And has the children all going off on their own for hours, even at night. Such different expectations of what children can cope with.

Zipity - the 4 Marys was definitely Bunty

Oh, but creepy books are the best!

I do think the 70s was a really good time for children's lit (I'm an 80s child but our books were often second-hand so we got the good stuff).

What about 'The Satanic Mill'. Now, that is properly creepy. There was a copy in my primary school, and I waited for years to buy it as an adult because it kept being on Amazon for stupidly huge amounts. Great, though.

Oh I loved The Worst Witch. I need to read those again!

My ten year old loves Grimble and Grimble at Christmas that I found in a second hand bookshop

A trip down memory lane!

I still have my hardback copy of Rebecca's World
I also loved Phoebe and the hot water bottles.
A book called The Hobbyers (sp?)
The Great Granny Robbery
The Giant Jam Sandwich
The Worst Witch series

I also used to love the A5 ish size comic books with extended stories from comics at the time like Bunty I think. Things like the 4 Marys

I

So many of these books we remember were creepy. Do creepy ( sinister, mysterious, atmospheric) books still get written for children I wonder? I don't have much contact with modern older children's books, DS is seven and his choices at the moment tend to the cows in space/ dinosaurs in space/ cakes in space end of the market.

Tilly's House - about a wooden doll who escapes her doll's house to find her own place to live, discovering drip dry cotton in the process. I managed to find a second hand copy on amazon and now my daughter loves it too.

I thought that was the Garden Gang books LadyPlumpington which were written by Jayne Fisher when she was about 9.

Page My best friend and I played nothing but Silver Brumbies for years, spent whole summers cantering around, neighing at each other. She was Thowra and I was Baringa.

She died a couple of years ago. I'm welling up now just remembering.