Obscure children's books that you used to love

Ah, that's it,Smarties! I half remembered it. I had forgotten about her fur coat. Thanks for posting a picture.

This thread is lovely :-)

dementedma and AFlorrick I'm so pleased! Not a single person I've ever spoken about 'not now, Bernard' has ever heard of it!

Also had haffertee hamster!

Oh Chocky is fab but my favourite John Wyndham is The Chrysalids.

Glad to have udentifued Annerton Pit. I remember it was really scary.

Loved Trebizon and Paula Danziger! I had a book of poems by Michael Rosen called Quick Let's Get Out Of Here. I could still probably recite most of them. I adored that book - it was mostly about the exploits of his late son, Eddie, who I think died of meningitis quite young. When I went to uni I ended up working weekends in a gift shop with Michael's daughter. We became friends and I went round to the family home for a cup of tea. I shamelessly took my well-thumbed book with me and Michael wrote a lovely dedication in it. Such a lovely man and so passionate about children's literature. It's still one of my most treasured possessions.

I still have this well loved copy of Flossie Teacake's Fur Coat.
The fur coat turned her into a teenager called Floz and she got into all manner of scrapes.

Loved (and DD loves) The Giant Jam Sandwich and Mrs Honey's Hat.

I used to read a book called Lester and the Unusual Pet which was fabulous.

Trebizon a firm favourite, as is Melling. I loved First Team at Tennis.

I'm hoping someone can help me identify this book - been trying to remember it for YEARS.

It was half A5 size - landscape. There was an arched border around the cover. It was basically about some children who painted a shed. ONe had yellow paint, one red etc etc. They each painted a different side a different colour then it rained and the shed happily turned brown. (Not to be confused with the Munch Bunch book where Sally Strawberry paints Spud's portrait all different colours)

Someone please help

Demented, I loved the Kingdom of Carbonel too :).

AFlorrick yes someone else has read it! Yes she spent most of her time by her mother's grave. That book haunted me, I hated all the adults in it! I lost my copy years ago but I read it so many times I remember it so well.

Little Richard - can't remember who wrote it but it starred a rabbit and his parents and porcupine friend. All sorts of adventures ensued - tracking paw prints, sack races and pillow fights. Plus all sorts of creatures living in the cracks and crevices of the Rabbit family's house! Loved it!

Ooh MrsSnufkin I remember that! I think it was called Glory Hole. And I have now found my unknown book is either Space Hostages or Starstormers also by Nicholas Fisk. Whose real name was David Higginbottom, Wikipedia tells me.

Was the Nicholas Fisk one The Living Fire? Or something. A collection of sci fi short stories. One was about a girl who went into space on a journey with her family, got bored, cloned herself, had a great time until they started annoying each other. Also one about fools gold and tempus fugit, and a cat alien.

One of mine was Gerard Durrell's The Talking Parcel.

I remember when I was in Juniors , I read a wonderful heartbreaking book. It really resonated with me but I have never been able to find it again. Not even on google/amazon etc. Its now at the point where I think I may have dreamed the book as I can find a book with the same title but its NOT a children's book. Maybe I overheard it being mentioned and made a fake memory based on a dream?

Anyways, It was called " a handful of blackberries" and the cover was a kid with a red stained face and hands with blackberry plants snarling behind him. It was about 2 best friends and how one of them dies of an illness. I remember it shocked me to the core, I didn't realise kids could die before that book and I remember crying and my mum trying to console me. She can't remember.....maybe I DID dream it?

Loving this thread!

I too loved Rebecca's World - I thankfully still have my now very dog-eared paperback copy. As an adult I came to the realisation that Mister Glister was basically Liberace.

Also remember and loved Olga da Polga, Green Smoke and Masquerade. (I looked up the solution to Masquerade online a few years back and it still made absolutely no sense to me...)

I remember loving a book called Alfonso Bonzo (think they made it into a kids TV series?). I also read this terrifying book by Nicholas Fisk - one of the stories I will NEVER forget was about two kids who found a hole in their house.They dropped things into it and they came back out of the hole changed and somehow alien. It was proper disturbing.

Oh, and DH is obsessed by Grimble by Clement Freud.

Carbonel was a favourite book of mine about a witch's cat. Dd bought me a commemorative copy for my 50th birthday last year. I used to read it at night to my younger brother and sisters

Oh, Children on the Oregon Trail ... the ending is just so emotional. A complete hankie-fest.

I had so many on here - Mary Plain, The Changeover, Sam Pig, Five Dolls in a Dolls House, the Gemma books, all the Melendy books (still love those), all the Lorna Hill ballet books.

A few that haven't yet come up -

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden - about a girl who makes a Japanese doll's house

The Case of the Silver Egg by Desmond Skirrow - this one is really obscure, no one I know has heard of it - a detective adventure caper

Trillions by Nicholas Fisk - aliens in the shape of multiplying gems

Re the blind boy trapped in the mine who makes contact with a spirit, I think that might be Annerton Pit by Peter Dickinson, one of my all time favourite authors

Finally, The Guardians by John Christopher, dystopian future in which Britain is divided into cities and countryside with Berlin-wall like fences in between.

Ooh bad editing - clearly not always confused, recently confused!

I'm going to add the book I loved that I've been trying to find forever (as I do every time there is one of these threads!) in the hope someone will know of it and be able to tell me the name:

It was a book of stories, told by animals in the zoo in the evenings, after the people go home. Every evening a different animal tells a story. The main character is a little tiger in the zoo with his mother. The story she tells is about tigers got their stripes (a bit like the Just So stories). There is also an elephant in the zoo and some more unusual animals, including a sloth, as well as an alligator who is the villain.

I would love to get hold of a copy of this to read to my DS but no one has ever heard of it and I just can't remember the name.

Moon on the Water by Nina Warner Hooke

the paperback is on amazon for £170

Ooh Dee it could have been, I read a lot of Nicholas Fisk - Grinny, Trillions...I am off to Google.

Yes to Tripods. I have always been highly confused because I remembered a scene that was not in the books when I re-read them recently, but I think that was in the TV series.

My two DC love The Giant Jam Sandwich :)

Favourites from my childhood are The Dolphin Crossing, which is a book for older children about Dunkirk, and Oscar and the Ice-Pick, which is a very random story about a boy rescuing his friends from a palace made of ice cream.

I've just looked at it must be back in print cos the prices are sensible again. Might order myself a copy.

Basgetti - I've read Cora Ravenwing! I loved the name, Cora. Did she live near a graveyard?? Am I imagining things??

We also own 'Not now Bernard' . Read it to DS1 when he was 3 and thought it was perhaps more for DH and I

It is so nice to read that other people loved the Bagthorpes! They are such brilliantly funny books.

Magic By The Lake and Half Magic were great books. Also adored the World's End series and the Moomin books.