Marianne Dreams

@elkiedee Thank you! Charmed Life was the first Diana Wynne Jones I ever came across. It was bought in Woolworths after a trip to the dentist and it was worth umpteen dental visits of the most uncomfortable sort. It was so enthralling, so imaginative and so rule-breakingly unconventional. I read it from cover to cover immediately I got home and didn’t want the story to ever end. It will always be special to me because it introduced me to DWJ’s wonderful stories. There is no one like her. I don’t think there ever will be.

@CatChant I love your username by the way.

The original US title is even more of a mouthful - Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth. Try remembering that in the bookshop!

I did but I read it a bit later and I think probably only once - I still have my Puffin copy of Mixed Up Files and an ex library hardback of Jennifer, Hecate....

If you like The Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler perhaps you remember another E L Konigsburg, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth and Me, about two girls trying to learn to be witches. Eating raw onions came into it! Much as I wanted to be a witch as a child I remember balking at the idea of eating a whole raw onion.

@elkiedeeI’ll see if I can DM you for your address

@Ponks
I remember Paul Zindel and have several of his books on my children's/YA shelves upstairs.

If no one else has asked already, I would be really interested in the copy of Marianne and Mark, please - I think you can probably PM me through the MN system here, or I can to you.

Oh this is such a lovely thread. So many of my childhood favourites mentioned: Honor Arundel (A Family Failing, the Emma books, The Longest Weekend - all seemed very grown up when I was at primary school), Alan Garner (may well make a visit to his house, thanks for the recommendation), the Carbonel books, Monica Dickens (loved the World’s End books) Nicholas Fisk (Grinny was definitely one of my favourite books as a child), Penelope Lively. Did anyone else read Paul Zindel? (The Undertaker’s Gone Bananas). I’m going to have to reread a couple of these soon as the thread has brought the memories back!

I have a copy of Marianne and Mark if anyone wants it, it’s not one I’m going to reread so would be happy to send it on.

Mixed Up Files is a great book. So unusual and quirky.

For those who like to reread childhood favourites, I spotted another American classic on Kindle at 99p - From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler - about two children who run away to a New York City museum.

Yes I've read a few of those. I got really cross at the blurb on the back of Picture Imperfect which suggests Think Again was her first adult book.

@elkiedee I love Jane Gardam’s books and Bilgewater and Long Way from Verona are among my all time favourites. She is so good at depicting awkward academic teenage girls who feel they’re never going to fit in.

In the early 1990s I read some of Jacqueline Wilson's early books published for adults, and published by Penguin under a crime imprint - there were about 6 of them. I think I still have a couple but I'm not sure where they are - I have far more books than I have shelf space for - or what I had bought, probably from charity shops, or borrowed from libraries.

I was reading some articles on her and Wikipedia mentions that she had already published about 40 (!) books before she really broke through. That presumably includes those old crime novels, which looked as if they were published in the late 70s, and the early YA books. I think she must have stuck to the formula of the books that were a hit.

Loved Jane Gardam

Yes, I read all these as a teenager and loved them. In the opposite direction, sort of, I also used to love pre-Tracey Beaker Jacqueline Wilson - she published lots of really quite cerebral, often quite dark, novels about bookish introverted teens - Waiting for the Sky to Fall, Amber, This Girl ....lots of characters with rich but often verging on dangerous imaginative lives. You never see these any more and she never mentions them, but she was really good in the 80s, before her characterization became as simplistic as Nick Sharrat's smiley face/sad face illustrations (sorry, any fans of her more recent work, but I've never understood why she seems so resolutely to have dumbed down)

Thank you for mentioning The Saturdays - I had never heard of it but it was only 99p on kindle so I gave it a go and loved it!

Jane Gardam's early books were published as children's/YA books, and I read and enjoyed them when I was quite young. So did my mum - I think she read some of them because I had them - first as library books, before finding my own copies of some of them later.

A Long Way From Verona is an excellent book about a reader who wants to write. Others first published as YA are Bilgewater, A Few Fair Days and The Summer After the Funeral. I have two or three of these in Abacus editions, obviously aimed at adults who'd enjoyed some of her later work, and one still as a kid's edition.

One that hasn't been mentioned yet is In a Blue Velvet Dress, 1972 (Catherine Sefton, pen name of Martin Waddell). Like Marianne Dreams, there is an element of dreams and real life overlapping at times. As a child I identified with the main character's horror at going on holiday and finding she had accidentally left all her books at home. The book is partly a ghost story, with an elegant solution to the problem of having nothing to read.

Do you mean Marianne Dreams? I read it at eight but it is a little scary with the stones. I’d probably say 10-12: closer to 12 for a sensitive child, and nearer to 10 for one who is not too bothered by spooky/slightly scary stories.

What age is this book suitable for please?

My copy got damp and I threw it away. I could have sold it for a bargain £100! I wish publishers would put old books on ebook format!

Absolutely adored it

I both love and am petrified by Marianne Dreams.
Also love The Owl Service which I think I skimmed and disliked as a child, but came back to later.