Marianne Dreams

My son is reading (my copy of) Goodnight Mr Tom now because they are doing it at school for WWII in year 6.

Kids books now seem to be a lot simpler eg David Walliams etc. Then big adventure series like Percy Jackson. There are some good ones but they seem maybe less subtle and don't give much time for build up - straight into the action which maybe is understandable considering competition from screens.

I read A Wizard of Earthsea to my son when he was 9, and have just started reading Northern Lights, not sure how that will go.

I recommend The Nowhere Emporium for something modern.

@pollyhemlock the summary doesn't ring any bells, but thanks for the suggestion!

@CherryogDog It’s not The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy by Penelope Lively is it?

I was gifted this book for my birthday one year and absolutely loved it. It was from my godmother who was a classroom assistant and she always gifted the best books. I re-read it earlier this year and was not disappointed.

It's not Stag Boy, unless I'm mixing parts of separate books up.

What a lovely thread down memory lane.
Are modern children's books this spooky?
I've been wracking my brains trying to remember the name of a book I read probably in the mid '70s, hoping someone can help with not much to go on.
A girl meets a boy (maybe at school), I think he's sort of "wrong side of town/ scarey / got a bad reputation), she goes to hang out with him, he lives in a mobile home, there's (maybe) an electric pylon nearby.
At some point she goes to meet him, and he's involved in some sort of ritual, wearing the scull of a stag.
That's about all I remember (and tbh it could just be a weird dream I remembered).

Oh, and Peter Dickinson's books on The Changes too

I love so many of the books mentioned here - I still have quite a few of them - I have a big collection of children's and YA fiction including some of my childhood books and some replacements, as well as books published later

Marianne Dreams, but perhaps even more the Clever Polly stories - I seem to have acquired Kindle copies that I'd forgotten about
Charlotte Sometimes
Charmed Life (featuring Cat Chant)
Come Back Lucy
Joan Aiken's Wolves of Willoughby Chase series, and also her collections of short stories for children - the ones about the Armitage family - two children's accidental magic adventures - have been collected as The Serial Garden - I bought this in hardback and then Virago also reissued it
Penelope Lively's kids' books
Geraldine Symons - there were apparently 5 books in the series about Pansy and Atalanta - Puffin published 3 - I first read The Workhouse Child and then found out about Miss Rivers and Miss Bridges and Mademoiselle through a friend whose mum was one of our neighbours
A Traveller in Time, and the very different A Country Child by the same author
Leon Garfield
the Green Knowe books
I missed Goodnight Mr Tom as a child though I was about the right age for it when it was first published - over the last few years I've caught up with Michelle Magorian's books, including her series about the Hollis children who get involved in acting - in the last, set in the early 1960s, a girl encounters Joan Littlewood's theatre company including a very young Sheila Hancock.
Rumer Godden's doll stories

Another who had never been able to track down "Marianne and Mark".

Anorak tip here: if you look through Dr Seuss's "Oh, The Places You'll Go", the house is there, complete with stones with one eye

I loved this book as a child but I did not think anyone else had read it.

@pollyhemlock Thank you so much - that's the one!

@borogovia the book you’re thinking of is Miss Rivers and Miss Bridges by Geraldine Symons, though the second girl is called Pansy not Poppy.

Amazing thread! I loved The Golden Goblet! Also Crown of Violet and the Vikigs Dawn books.

There's another book I remember reading but I don't remember the title, maybe somone does? It was a historical novel abut two girls called Poppy and Atalanta who get involved with the suffragette movement. Atalanta was a particularly memorable character.

Loved both of these

The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is fab. Penelope Lively in general is great. I loved lots of her books.

@MonGrainDeSel I’ve not come across The Golden Goblet so that’s another for the list, thank you.

I can’t believe I forgot Penelope Lively’s The Ghost of Thomas Kempe when I was listing my favourite ghost/time slip type stories. Or the same author’s very different but wonderfully clever and funny The Voyage of QV66, which I have been recommending to anyone who will stand still long enough for years!

@Beachtastic I knew Tien Pao was based on a real war orphan ‘adopted’ by DeJong’s unit. But I never knew that DeJong wasn’t allowed to bring him back to the US and that he lost all contact with the child after the Communist takeover. That is truly heartbreaking.

Nicholas Fisk is amazing. A Rag, A Bone and a Hank of Hair was one of my favourite books.

Also, for those who like historical children's fiction, has anyone read The Golden Goblet. I adored this book.

@pollyhemlock Oh yes, the message Aquila sends to the sister he will never be able to see again because fate has washed them up on opposing sides, brings a lump to my throat every time I read The Lantern Bearers:

“Ask her if she remembers the terrace steps under the damson tree at home. Ask her if she remembers the talk we had there once, about Odysseus coming home. Say to her - as though it were I who spoke through you, ‘ “Look, I’ve a dolphin on my shoulder. I’m your long-lost brother.”

Gulp…

@Beachtastic If Catherine Storr didn’t like the ending of Paperhouse then I am in very good company indeed! I would like to see it again though, and Escape into Night too.

@persephonia Peter Dickinson’s The Changes trilogy - The Weathermonger, Heartsease and The Devil’s Children - is another series I read and loved after having the wits scared out of me by catching a few glimpses of the television adaptation. I think 1970s TV companies must have specialised in dramatising children’s novels guaranteed to send their audiences scuttling behind the sofa. The Owl Service was another one. If we’d had the dinner service that inspired Alan Garner I’d never have been able to eat a mouthful from it (I’d love to have it now!).

@SwallowsandAmazonians and @minipie as fellow The Wheel on the School fans, have you read The House of Sixty Fathers, also by Meindert DeJong? It’s about a little boy separated from his parents during the Japanese invasion of China and how, all alone except for the family’s piglet, he sets out to search for them. It’s so real, so harrowing, so heartwarming, and another that will leave you damp-eyed every time.

I loved Leon Garfield too, especially Smith and Devil in the Fog. That man could dance with language and he was a genius at conjuring up atmosphere.

One of the nicest things about threads like these, apart from yattering along with like-minded souls, is that they usually throw up other books to discover. Thanks to this thread, I now know The Chinese Egg had a sequel; Vicky. So that is now on the ‘to look for list’. And I have never come across Nicholas Fisk so I look forward ro investigating his titles.

I loved When Marnie Was There. Such a wonderful story

I also liked Charlotte Sometimes - there was a band in the 90s called that as well

I think I read Marianne Dreams when I was around 10 or 11. I found it terrifying - the stones with eyes, didn’t they come nearer and nearer to the house? Probably the most frightening children’s book I ever read.

Joan Aiken was much more gentle, domesticated magic. I never forgot the Serial Garden, and probably, as a child, fantasised about finding the way into it myself!

I really liked Aliens in the Family!

Escape into the night is on youtube.

Scary! Even though kids tv