What are your favourite kids books? (Not so well known ones)

[somanydevices]

Happy world book day everyone! (DD's school did it today. DS's tomorrow, still one to go...)

I thought it could be nice to share some book recommendations with each other, outside of the classics & really popular books we all know. My kids read loads and I know I can struggle to find decent new stuff online. I'd love to know abotu some more "hard to find" stuff.

What are your family's favourite kid's books that not everyone knows?

Here's some of ours.

Fox and the the Star The illustrations are stunning! This book feels magical!

Journey. The first of 3 books. If you have a young child who likes to get involved this is good. It's not got any words at all, so you make up the words as you go along. DD loved "reading" it to me. Again the pictures are beautiful.

The Problem with Problems Not strictly a favourite as I haven't actually read this yet, I just ordered today as I heard the author talking about it and it looks great.

Morris's Dissappearing Bag
We have a copy of this from when I was little! I loved it, the story's great. Lovely to see they still sell it.

Also I came across this podcast on children's books today, looks good. www.spellboundkids.com

For older kids:

Voyage to Magical North - the Accidental Pirates My eldest loved this chapter book. It's so beautifully written. The main character is a girl, and it's a swashbuckling adventure full of magic. I love that it's good for both girls and boys to have a book with a female main character in this kind of role & setting.

Cogheart A steampunk kids novel featuring a girl and a boy going on adventures to save their dad. The first in the series - DS loves these.

@bookmum08, yes, we had the same discussion about walking to school by yourself!

When Marnie Was There - Joan G. Robinson, 1967

Under the Hawthorn Tree - Marita Conlon-McKenna, 1990

@Littlewhitedove
A traveller in time is a wonderful book. It has been reissued, so should be able to get hold of it.

Catherine Storr fans, did you know Marianne Dreams has a sequel? Marianne and Mark. Hard to get hold of but well worth it.

Did anybody else enjoy The Kingdom series by cynthia voigt?
I only read one of them but it really stayed with me. Thanks to this thread i might search for the others and reread them!

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. It's part of a five part sequence but this is definitely the best one. I first read it when I was 10 and it was deliciously atmospheric combining the magic of Christmas with creepy pagan forces. I've re read it many times.

@Bloodybridget thank you! I could have googled but it was early

It freaked me out the first time I read it, but I re-read it in my teens and absolutely loved it. I thought it was brilliantly written and a really interesting concept.

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. It's part of a five part sequence but this is definitely the best one.

Yes! I read this for English when I was in year 7 and really enjoyed it. Apparently they were going to do a film series and it was an utter disaster!

For older children, Chalky, by Howard Apps - an absolutely brilliant story of detection and adventure, about 2 ordinary boys who go in search of a lost diamond. Much of it is set around the Essex marshes.

Why it’s never been made into a film I can’t imagine - except that nobody but siblings and I ever seem to have heard of it!

As a long grown up I still read and thoroughly enjoy it now and then. It’s also very funny here and there.
Set in the 1950s but somehow doesn’t feel too dated.

Sadly out of print - I’ve only found it 2nd hand on e.g. abebooks.co.uk, but still there for £4 or so.

When my now 18 year old son was a toddler we spent hours reading and re-reading the Eddy and the bear stories-it’s the bear, my friend bear and where’s my teddy by Jez Alborough. I still love them!

I work in a preschool now and I never ever tire of reading the tiger who came to tea. Ever.

@adaline I saw the film and it was absolute crap. An Americanised version which totally changed the story e.g. Will Stanton had a twin brother who mysteriously disappeared as a baby, and Will sets out to find him. WTAF? Christopher Ecclestone played The Rider. I had to switch it off it was that bad.

Kings of the Cardboard Castle -by Elisabeth Berseford. I think it's probably out of print now but I loved this book. Just about a gang of kids who built and decorated a cardboard fortress. It was just so believable - just what you could do with your own mates, not like Enid Blyton's snooty kids who had impossible adventures.

The Family For One End Street has already been mentions - again I loved this as they were so believable - kids getting into adevntures that you could actually believe could happen to you.

I loved I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith and Little Women, What Katy Did and all of Judy Bloom, but these are all well know classics.

I have just remembered more favourites - I used to love the books by Ruth Thomas. The Runaways, The Secret, The New Boy - plus she wrote 2 or 3 more I think.

The children of Green Knowe is a wonderful book.

Alan Garner doesbt seem to be read anymore, I loved them all, particularly Elidor. The Owl Service was a very good TV series a long time ago. Scared me witless.

I absolutely loved a book titled 'I Own The Racecourse' . It was about a lonely boy who through a series of misunderstandings thinks he genuinely owns the local, run down racecourse. Several of its employees kindly play along and it's just a really sweet and upbeat story with a happy ending.

As a child I loved the Ramona Quimby books, also Saddle Club and Heidi.

As an adult the His Dark Materials are still my favourite books ever. I'm currently reading Pax which is very good.

My 11 year old's favourite book is one he's just read as part of his school work called A Long Walk to Water about a young boy from Sudan whose whole village is killed. Based on a true story and its really stuck with DS, he talked about it for ages.

The Deptford Mice books
Charlotte Sometimes
When the Whales Came
The Snow Spider trilogy

All books I loved and reread frequently as a child

@BikeRunSki I opened this thread to write Goodnight Lulu my kids are teenagers now but that books still makes my heart swell even thinking about it. Have bought it for so many new parents. Love the bit at the end when I always tickled my kids 🥰

@peaceanddove that's a real shame - I think it has the potential to be really good as well.

Probably far too babyish a book for this thread but DS is loving Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox at the moment. He's only 1, but points to his fingers and toes as we read it and it's a very sweet story.

For younger children, The Bear and the Piano by David Litchfield and its sequel, The Bear, the piano, the dog and the fiddle are both absolute masterpieces in my opinion. Definitely modern classics.

The Boy who Grew Dragons by Andy Shepherd is wonderful and another vote for the Mr Penguin books by Alex T Smith for first chapter books.

Anything by Katherine Rundell or Emma Carroll are all absolutely wonderful for older children.

Seeing some of these are bringing back happy childhood reading memories!

I loved Penelope Lively - Astercote, the Diary of Thomas Kempe and a Stitch in Time

Nigel Hinton - the Beaver Towers stories

Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel - so simply written but great stories.

Michael Birdboy. It was published in 1975 and I was born in 77 so must have been one of my first books. My mum and dad still have it and looking forward to reading it with my 5 year old when we're there at Easter.

Dilly the dinosaur and my ultimate favourite I want a blue banana by joyce dunbar, such a ridiculous but fun story, I keep my childhood copy on my wardrobe so the dc can't ruin in

Harold and the Purple Crayon (couldn't get hold of it for ages, by which point the boys were too old to appreciate it properly [sob] )

The Burning Questions of Bingo Brown by Betsy Byars

The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. Quite why my sons refused to read this I don't know. The older got really into the Belgariad, so it was immensely annoying.

Ramona, One End Street, Naughty Little Sister, Ordinary Princess

Books the boys did love: Mr Gum, How to Train your Dragon, Skulduggery Pleasant

Stoneheart and sequels, by Charlie Fletcher - living stones of London, with time travel and a scary baddy

Wolf Brother (and sequels?) by Michelle Paver

Cherub - a whole series based on the idea that some children have been recruited into an organisation that does secret work

Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz, first book Stormbreaker

oh oh oh! just remembered

Rover by Michael Rosen

That one and The Snail and The Whale used to make me choke up every time.

The Meg Mysteries by Holly Beth Walker,
And Trixie Belden books.