Marianne Dreams

@pollyhemlock Yes, you’re right, the Mouldiwarp is from The House of Arden and what a grumpy ‘fairy’ he is - just like the Psammead, now I come to think of it. I loved The Wonderful Garden too, and you’re right again; it is the only one that has a possible rational explanation for anything magical. I wonder why.

@LadyBrendaLast Yes, it did place the setting for The Magician’s Nephew very well for a child, didn’t it. And I think it was also a way for CS Lewis of acknowledging E Nesbit’s influence on his work. He’d grown up reading and loving her stories - one of which has a child getting into another world through a wardrobe.

I must apologise. I’ve only just realised that I managed to muddle up two book threads and so started chuntering on about Monica Dickens’ adult books on the wrong thread! I did like her children’s books too, especially the World’s End series - living with lots of animals and no bossy grown-ups!

One More River was fantastic. I could be wrong but I vaguely remember a sequel, although I don’t think it had quite the same impact.

Drawn in because I adored Marianne Dreams, although it gave me nightmares. I enjoyed the Chinese Egg but did not like Marianne and Mark. Charlotte Sometimes, like Tom’s Midnight Garden, made me think about the impact of time and the feeling of loss.I love how lots of Diana Wynne Jones fans have made it here too - she really is a superb author. It is strange how lots of books today are just less satisfying although not all of them. Frances Hardinge (spelling?) has the same depth and I am very fond of Percy Jackson despite not being quite so thought provoking.

Does anyone remember a time slip story where a girl went back to the time of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee? And one called Romansgrove, where the children went back in time to Victorian/Edwardian times. I also enjoyed a spooky book called A Candle in her Room.

It does!

@CatChant , another huge fan of E Nesbit. They are my comfort reading.

Incidentally, in the "Magicians Nephew", I think it starts off with dating something like, "when the Bastables were still looking for treasure in Lewishamn Road".

I loved that. Tying up the setting so well.

@CatChant Another lesser known Nesbit I’m very fond of is The Wonderful Garden which is quite unusual in that the magic is ambivalent- there’s a rational explanation for all of it. House of Arden is the one with the Mouldiwarp isn’t it?

Ah yes, @CatChant Edward Eager.

I know which character you mean and it is shocking... and surely must have been even for that time?

I loved the L Shaped Room, but even back in the day saw that it was quite startlingly racist in its depiction of one of the characters

Dammit catchant you got there before me. The Dolls House by Rumer Godden is such a good read.
And I, also, love Marianne Dreams.
Oddly enough, In her great book on children's fiction, bookworm, Lucy Mangan doesn't mention it.

Loved Monica Dickens and The L Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks. Another childhood fave was Alan Garner The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

Edward Eager, inspired by E Nesbit, wrote Magic by the Lake and several other books in which magic collides with reality with awkward consequences for the children involved. I think he pays some sort of tribute to E Nesbit in every story. My particular favourite was Half Magic but I enjoyed them all.

E Nesbit was in a class of her own, wasn’t she. I loved the books about the Bastables with their hilariously unreliable mystery narrator who unmasks himself on the very first page: “It was Oswald who first thought of looking for treasure. Oswald often thinks of very interesting things.”

I have very fond memories of borrowing E Nesbit from the library in sturdy, chunky hardbacks with red or green dustjackets. Later, I bought my own copies in Puffin paperbacks and, later still, when I realised that not all of the stories by her that I had loved so much had ever made it into paperback, I picked up secondhand editions just like the ones I used to borrow and which were ex-library copies that had been sold for a song.

Of the less well-known Nesbits I think my favourite is Harding’s Luck, a much stronger sequel to The House of Arden, with a haunting time-travelling story. It is flawed, because at one point, a clearly very pressed for time E Nesbit simply referred readers to The House of Arden rather than explain a miraculous escape, but Dickie from New Cross is a likeable hero and his adventures were very exciting. Interestingly, the Dickie who briefly appeared in The House of Arden was a much more middle class boy than the slum child of Harding’s Luck so I think he was a character who evolved as Nesbit realised there could be a lot more to the story.

I enjoyed Monica Dickens too. As well as One Pair of Feet and My Turn to Make the Tea, there was also One Pair of Hands, her account of working as a cook or a cook/general depending on the status of the household she was employed in. Very funny though, as a teenager, I remember being mystified that she chose to get up at the crack of dawn and slave away at such a gruelling job that she quite often disliked very much, when, financially speaking, she clearly didn’t need to work. But it did give her material, as did the hospital, the local newspaper, the munitions factory (The Fancy), marrying an American (No More Meadows) and volunteering with The Samaritans (The Listeners).

E. Nesbit was great yeah - although the Railway Children used to annoy me as a child for how great Bobbie was supposed to be, her mother's favourite and the narrator's too! Grumpy Peter and helpful Phyllis much more entertaining.

I loved Elizabeth Enright. Did she write Magic by the Lake?

E. Nesbit is great- one of the first authors to depict children as children and not as moral exemplars. All her books are wonderful but I’m particularly fond of The Enchanted Castle, with the utterly terrifying Ugly-Wuglies.

Yes, the whole cough drops for “paying guests” and a little boy doll called Lupin all really rings a bell, but I dont remember the book title at all. Maybe paying for things with cough drops was a common theme in eg Teddy Robinson books, or similar?? Or maybe I read it and don’t remember. But I remember nearly all of them!

I remember Roller Skates!

For a slightly later New York set book about children with a lot of freedom try The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright. It is the first of four books about the Melandy family, all rather lovely.

One I loved that doesn't seem to be very well known, though it was published in Puffin in the 1970s, is Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer, an American story set in 1890s New York City (think it was published in the 1920s).

Lucinda is 10, and her parents decide to go abroad for a year, and arrange for her to board with an older lady - I can't quite remember the details of this though I've reread it a few years ago. Anyway, she has what seems like an astonishing amount of freedom and independence for a child her age in the big city, then or 130 years later! She makes friends with a family in a neighbouring apartment, and a surprising range of other people, some really quite odd for a middle class 10 year old to be hanging out with. This is often really funny, but has some sad moments

Five Dolls in a House was lovely - Vanessa was brilliant. I remember her insistence on the phrase 'the paying guest' but she had other good lines too, didn't she? Just can't remember them. But I do remember asking for cough sweets, after reading it, because they sounded so lovely. She was Hyacinth Bouquet in doll form

Ever since someone mentioned Gobbolino on this thread, I’ve had the song in my head - it was in the apusskidu school songbook and we used to sing it at Halloween. Pic attached when it loads.

A wonderful children's chapter book I discovered only as an adult but my children enjoyed very much, is Satchkin Patchkin (and its hard to find sequel, Mother Farthing's luck). By Helen Morgan, better known as the author of the 'Mary Kate' books. Lovely language, like a prose poem. Satchkin Patchkin is 'a little green magic man, who lives, like a leaf, in the apple tree'. The villain Jasper is 'a lean man, a mean man, a man without a smile'. Splendid stuff! I've never met anyone in real life who has read these. Great for reading aloud with younger children.

@CatChant yes I enjoyed The Twelve and the Genii too, though agree it lacks the subversive racketty appeal of the Five Dolls.

@TheBookShelf Vanessa, Jane, Jacqueline the French paying guest, Amanda, Lupin and the Monkey! And Elizabeth/Mrs Small, who owned the dolls’ house. Yes, I loved that series and longed for a dolls’ house like the one in the illustrations.

Later I read The Twelve and the Genii, about the Brontë children’s celebrated toy soldiers and their search for a new place in the world, which she published as Pauline Clarke, rather than Helen Clare. It’s very inventive and I did enjoy it but, for me, it hasn’t got quite the same charm as the Five Dolls’ gleefully racketty adventures.

I loved Carbonel, Gobbolino, The Little Broomstick etc. I first read Gobbolino in paperback and years later as an adult found a hardback, which had several more chapters - I'd never realised the paperback was abridged.

Did anyone else love Five Dolls in a House (Helen Clare, pseudonym of Pauline Clarke), another massive childhood favourite of mine (there are several sequels too, but hard to find and very expensive sadly). I loved how the dolls used cough sweets as currency, and their characters and squabbles.