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?

Thank you therealsquireofwildacre

I think I only had the one Blackberry Farm book. I expect my mum picked it up at a jumble sale or fete.

SuperFly I know Haynes Lane but never bought any books there weirdly, just crockery mainly.

Cow who Fell in the Canal is an old favourite and Anatole too - think it's Anatole the Cleverest Mouse in France? Would makes great film, I always thought, but then they made Ratatouille which is a bit too similar maybe.

Another French book I loved is One Hundred Million Francs about a gang of very poor and streetwise kids in Paris who uncovered some dastardly doings. It's a really exciting and evocative read - I always longed to be an urchin running round the streets of Paris after reading it.

Thanks to whoever mentioned Girls of the Rose Dormitory- had completely forgotten this but just found it on Amazon in a volume with Good for Gracie! and A Rebel Schoolgirl. Happy days

The Aquamarine series by Jenny Nimmo. The first one was the Rainbow and Mr Zed and whenever I mention it, people look at me like I'm speaking ancient greek!

Ahhh, *Ultramarine not Aquamarine.

Countess of Fitzdotterel I found a copy of The Good Master a couple of years ago to my joy, but I'venever read The Singing Tree. Is that the sequel? If so, do Kate and Jansci get married?

Oh, so many of these that I remember! I probably averaged a book a night for several years in my early teens and lots of these are bringing back memories even if I don't recognise the titles.

Seeing as mine haven't been mentioned yet, I'm guessing they are pretty obscure:
The Bunjee Venture (time travel with a speaking, woolly-mammoth-esque bunjee)
The Pobble and the Runcible Cat (not the poem, a story by Muriel Lamb based on it)
Miss Jaster's Garden (short-sighted old ladies sows seeds on a hibernating hedgehog who then walks off with all her flowers)
and my all-time favourite, The Winter Bear (poem, kids find a battered old teddy bear stuck in a tree).

Funnily enough, all of them were stories I remember my dad reading to me. He will always be a bunjee and Treebeard from Lord of the Rings to me. Eep eep worra worra frenlee frenlee bunjee...

And in case anyone can remember this, my mum and I wish we had never thrown out a story we refer to as Emily Woodmouse. It was in a series of small, thin books which were square with a green cover on the back. Emily Woodmouse collected seeds, nuts and berries etc for her larder - I'm picturing a bramble - and that's about as much as I remember. Illustrated. Anyone know the book I mean?!

Has anyone read Requiem for a Princess by Ruth M Arthur? It was about a teenage girl who had just found out accidentally that she was adopted, and she was upset and didn't want to talk to her parents about it, but ended up processing it on holiday in Cornwall by going back in time and living the life of an adopted Spanish girl in the sixteenth century? It had a lot of piano playing in, which I loved.

The other series I love was the Foxwood series. Like Farthing Wood but the animals lived in proper houses and wore clothes!

I don't remember them getting married Niminy - it's about what happens in Ww1 when their fathers have to go and fight so Jansci has to run the farm on his own, and then they have to go on a journey to rescue one of them.

Anyone read the book with an owl that said 'gronk' and 'flunk'? Gronk has our family exclamation of grumpiness ever since, but the name of the book now has a very rude meaning and the book seems to not be around anymore (googling brings some interesting results). Be interested to know if anyone else remembers it!

The Elephant and the Bad Baby was a favourite when I was younger.

As I got older, I had a book called The Whitby Witches' and then 'The Warlock of Whitby' which were massive favourites. They had the most detailed pencil drawings in them. Man I wish I had kept them.

The Mousehole Cat makes me cry.

I've just remembered Badjelly the Witch, which was always my favourite choice for Reading Corner (when the teacher read to us all as a class) at primary school.

This is obviously awful but we loved Little Black Sambo as children - with the tigers and the butter and the pancakes. It's been reissued as the Story of Little Babaji which is much better from that point of view - and still lovely in other respects.

Interesting how many children's stories end in pancakes - we also loved The Elephant and the Bad Baby which ends with pancakes for tea as well.

We had Black Sambo but I wasn't a fan - not due to my early anti-racist credentials, I was just terrified of the tigers!

Mistress Masham's Repose. Had a vast crumbling stately home, a 9 year old orphan, an eccentric professor, an evil governess and tiny people living on an island in the ornamental lake.

Another one for "The Cow who Fell in the Canal" also "The Story of Ping". A real favourite though is "Ferdinand the Bull". It is about a gentle bull who just wants to sit under the cork tree and smell the flowers but is sent off to a bullfight. It was written during the Spanish civil war and is meant to have references to the war- can't see it myself.

marsh there are books there but you have to hunt for them. Crockery the main draw there but you can get all sorts of other stuff from Bakelite telephones (?) to sort of faux Tiffany lamps and all sort of other stuff.

the old book storage space I know of is as you come down the hill you go past main side entrance and down the side hill on left into a yard with stalls - across on far left there used to be a book sort of shop/junk area. literally packed to the rafters with books. I didn't check last time but it may or may not be there. if you ARE after books in the main market you just have to ask.

Crystal Palace Vintage (Westow Street) either sells original or reprint Ladybird books not sure what else.

www.crystalpalacevintage.com/

SuperFly oh yes I know the bit you mean. I have bought a book there, one of those housewives compendiums called Enquire Within that tells you how to lay a table or what sauces go with what roast meat. For kids books the charity shops in Herne Hill and Streatham are my favourite hunting grounds.

marsh honestly the part I mean well I went there with DM who lives nearby and books were stacked up everywhere, the man owning it was a bit elderly, it looked to be honest a fire hazard...!

Good call re Herne Hill and Streatham re more places to find books.

Withershins - I had The Wave. That was a great book.

Also Children if the Dust, which I read and then cried under my duvet for days after thinking there was going to be a nuclear war and I was going to have to live under the coffee table in the lounge covered by a blanket.

Trebizon and Sadler Wells were also favorites. I haven't met anyone else who read the Sadlers Wells books.

I read and read as a kid. I got a Saturday job in a book shop when I was old enough.

Blackberry Farm! We had those - they must have been my mum's and uncle's as they're ancient. My DD, now 6, loved them so much at 3 that I read them nightly for nearly a year.
So, so old fashioned. 'Saturday on Blackberry Farm' is the favourite.

'Piggly plays truant' and 'The Green Umbrella' - ladybird books I think, written it terrible verse!

I was reminiscing with my mother about Blackberry Farm and the Green Umbrella only last week!

Also the Beverley Nicholls books "The Tree That Sat Down" etc - very funny but also menacing. And Carbonel, Mistress Masham, and the Lorna Hill books, which I still love.

Anyone remember Tiger Nanny?

Redcap Runs Away by Rhoda Power

Also loved Orlando the Marmalade Cat

A Dream in the House by Josephine Poole - recently obtained a copy and it didn't live up to my memories.

The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater