Obscure children's books that you used to love

[LadyPlumpington]

Mine is 'The Island of the Skog' by Steven Kellogg. The DC love it too :)

What are your old obscure favourites?

'The Satanic Mill' is published again under its original German title of 'Krabat' and there's a film too I think.

Ooh, I loved the Taran the Wanderer books (Chronicles of Prydain?). I still think they are hugely underrated. I loved the stroppy princess and even considered Eillonwy as a name for DD (only briefly though since I'm not Welsh and don't know how to spell/pronounce it ).

And I'd forgotten all about the Garden Gang!

While I liked Gobbolino the Witch's Cat and the Little Wooden Horse books they always made me quite sad as a child as they seemed to travel from one miserable situation to the next. Maybe I am misremembering them though.

Since the amazing success of my request about the children flying into the sun, I'm just going to drop this one in before I go to bed - no-one has ever found this for me and if any of my FB friends are here they will know who I am as I ask them periodically.

Girl has access to weird London Underground train which takes her to strange stations called things like Dome and Museum. Turns out she,s just having a breakdown and its a perfectly normal train going to places like St Paul's. She also has an imaginary friend called Mee. possibly.

Anyone?

No I felt the same MrsS. Particularly the Little Wooden Horse. So stoic in the face of misery piled on misery, especially down the mine!

My DS loved the Bagthorpe saga, recently read to him. DH and he are currently enjoying the Voyage of QV66 :)

He did like King of the Copper Mountains too, as did I. Anyone read Robber Hopsika by the same author?

Green Smoke - yes
What a Mess - yes!!
Carbonel - tick

Has anyone but me read the Thirteen Days of Christmas by Jenny Overton? It's a lovely story imagining the origins of the carol - all starts with two children wanting to marry off their big sister, who's a terrible cook and rather bossy. Her suitor is very lovely but unimaginative and they think he should try and step it up a bit. So he starts sending round a partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves ...

She also wrote Creed Country and the Nightwatch Winter and I've never found anyone else who's read them.

All the Alan Garner books I've read have been genuinely scary, a bit too scary for me when I was a kid. I think it's the way he brings the creepy stuff into our world. There is a very real sense of danger.

Seventies kids TV drama was often creepy and scary too. Lots of supernatural and fantasty plots.

Ooh! Thank you, frances. I did eventually find a second-hand copy for a reasonable price (bonus: the same cover I remembered!). But I would love to buy it for other people's children, so glad to know.

SaguaroBlossom I've just looked at my copy of that Victorian tear jerker, Froggie's Little Brother - mine was presented to Alfred Blood, for Regular Attendance, Good Conduct and Progress in School Work during the year 1908! by Loughborough Education Committee. Is your copy as old?

The book I really love, and perhaps any Oz readers can help me out here, is my Puffin edition of The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay. Is that right that it's an Ozzie Children's Classic?

Can I also bid for The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden?

Oh and Fly By Night by K M Peyton (Flambards author)

Glad it wasn't just me LauraChant .

I wonder if anyone else has read this book - I can't remember what it was called and no one I know has heard of it. It was about a girl in Victorian times (possibly) who found an antiques shop but everything she bought there was cursed. I remember she buys a glass bowl or something similar, and the person she buys it for ends up cutting their hand on it for example. It was pretty creepy for a children's book...

Tinkly. Lovely to have those memories though.

I remember Te Fate of Jeremy Fissick. I think I got it from school.

I am 3/4 the way through reading the Lone Pine series to Ds. Who loves them, although he does he a bit giggly about the Gay Dolphin. They're touring with a Lone Pine play this summer. (member of the Malcolm Saville Society)

Another one I love but no one else has ever found is Make Believe by Elizabeth Goudge. And Smoky House and Linnets and Valerians.

Then Arthur Catherall. Shanghaied is good, and the Unwilling Smuggler.

I've just managed to get a copy of 1066 and all that.

Dd2 has just discovered my Dimsie book collection (and is complaining it isn't bigger)

And the first Antonia Forest I got has a strange coincidence. I got it at uni a good distance away from where I live now It's an exschool library copy... From the school dd1 is now at. And I've just got copies f her historical ones.

From the first page, Dear Mr Henshaw....I must have read this over and over. Was it Beverley Cleary? Also Tikki-Tikki-Tembo is great, bought a copy for my children a few years ago.

Also, The Wild Baby, bought from Amazon recently and ended up being library copy from US. My kids love it!

Demon Headmaster anyone?

Brown mouse by Frank someone.
The horn of merlyns by violet ?
Anything by Joan Aiken, I loved black hearts over battersea.
All the Malcom Saville adventure books, too.

My love of odd children's books has led me to seek out similar for my own children; there are some real gems. So in the future I expect they will be writing similar posts e.g. 'Does anyone remember a book where the family lived in uncles hat then a violin and also nowhere?'
Attaching some pictures for Rebecca's world fans.

Zipity I used to get those comic "specials" as well. The only one I can remember (inevitably) was a horse story, with the usual near-death, horse thieves, triumph at the showjumping etc. I remember the horse was called Cornish Gold. I have absolutely no idea how I can still remember that, given I can't remember what I was doing at work last week.

Violet Needham, Dawn. Black Riders was her best known. I read it to ds, followed by the white riders by Monica Edwards.
Also loved House of the Paladin by her too.

Yes to so many of these.
My childhood book though was called 'the duchess bakes a cake' I have such lovely memories of my dad reading it to us over and over again and joining in with the words. My dc were a bit meh about it - I was gutted.

hels71 - when I was a children's librarian I used to read Tikki-tikki-tembo at story time - I used to know the whole name straight off, but now (35 years later) I can only get as far as Tikki-tikki-tembo-no-sa-rembo...

I remember a lot of these, from my own childhood, my library days and my children's books, and adding some of my favourites

Silver Snaffles (Primrose Cumming)
Moorland Mousie and Older Mousie (Golden Gorse)
A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair (Nicholas Fisk)
Go Well, Stay Well (Toecky Jones)
The Witch Family (Eleanor Estes)
The Otterbury Incident (C Day Lewis)
The Magic Pudding (Norman Lindsay)
Nine Lives of Island Mackenzie (Ursula Moray Williams)
Lad: a dog (Albert Payson Terhune)
Timber: the story of a horse (Judith M Berrisford)
The Mr Twink books by Freda Hurt - I'd love to get some of these, but they sell for anything from about £75 to £300

And two I've never come across again and don't remember author or title:
One was about a family of children who ran away, I think because they thought their new stepmother, who they'd never met, was going to make them get rid of their dog.

The other one, which has been bugging me for ages, was a historical one set in Roman Britain, where the son of the Roman governor of London (called Lucius)gets kidnapped and sold as a slave and travels to Wales with another slave called Crispin - they meet a Welsh chief's daughter and there's something about a brooch. I've tried googling, but I just get stuff about The Queen's Brooch by Henry Treece, which it definitely isn't, nor is it Rosemary Sutcliffe. I think it might have been one of the reading scheme books - possibly the Gazelle/Antelope/Reideer one - does anyone remember those?

pagenotfound is that The Midnight Horse by Monica Edwards?

The horse is Silver Circus in that, but the girls make plasticine horses called Spanish Gold and Cornish Cream

PageNotFound I am the same. I have very clear memories of all sorts of details from long ago but need to consult my diary to remember what I did today!
I can remember the feel of those comic books and the excitement at getting a new one or swapping with a friend. The one I remember most is about a gymnast who was too poor to practice at a gym but used fences and trees outdoors and always won the competition in the end and beat all the snobby girls.

I loved the Parlicoot books which were published in the 1940s (I think) and belonged to my DMum.

My particular favourite though was "Spidersweb for Two" - in which the two youngest children of a messy, extended family are left at home for a year when their siblings leave home to study and work. They find themselves taking part in a wonderful treasure hunt throughout the year. It seems to be a 1960s American book - but I adored it...so much love and detail.

Also "Silver Snaffles" from my 'I want a pony' phase.

The very best stories were the ones that my DDad made up for us about me and my sisters.

Rikki tikki tembo nosar rem bo charry Barry ritsi pip berry pembo
Excuse spelling. I can recite it but not write it

I think the roman one might be a Geoffrey Trease.

So many favourite books of mine on this thread! I still own The Armourer's House (& read it often) and still have some Sam Pig books, The Ordinary Princess and The Necklace of Raindrops. Oh and all the Rumer Godden books but then I'm dolls house obsessed so those are particular favourites of mine.

I don't own Green Smoke any more sadly, or Flossie Teacake, but my DM today brought me a copy for the DDs of the new Puffin reprint of clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf. Hurrah!

Some picture books I was very fond of: Big Dog & Little Dog (still in print) and Snuff by Quentin Blake (not sure) and Captain Najork which was illustrated by Quentin Blake. But my no 1 favourite picture book is from the 1950s - passed down by my aunt, but I have my own copy now, it's called I Wish, I Wish, by Lisl Weill. If you have a DD and she loves cats, well, try and track down a copy, that's all I'm saying.

Oh Mrs Snufkins, I too harboured thoughts of calling a DD Eilonwy. And DS Fflewddur. My Welsh dad would have been all at me though.
And The Little Wooden Horse was just bloody heart rending. With his peeling paint and all. Between that, Mr Benn and Oliver Postgate, my left wing leanings were sealed.