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?

Ninnypants, I remember Plop the owl too! My teacher read that out loud to us at primary school.

Does anyone else remember Daphne's Book by Mary Downing Hahn? A really lovely story about two girls who are both outside the cool clique at school but get paired up by a teacher and create a children's book.

playinghouse it was read to me in what is now year 3 so 7 or 8 (almost 40 years ago!) and I never forgot it. Bought it and read it for myself a couple of years later.

Lucky you to find it in a charity shop. If it's the one with the Larry Learmonth illustrations it's worth a bit too

I've just checked and it is illustrated by Larry Learmouth!

"The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark" - about an owl named Plop.

I read The Bewitching of Allison Allbright a lot.
The Prince in Waiting trilogy.
The Beverley Nichols Tree That Sat Down series - I have all these and most of his other books.
The Otterbury Incident is terrific.
Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles also.
Plague 99 trilogy
When Marnie Was There has been made into a Studio Ghibli film this year.
I have copies of all these.

My obscure books that I had to hunt for are -
The Ghost Garden by Hila Feil - about a 11/12 yr old who spends the summer living in a commune on Rhode Island and meets a new friend who wants to call up a ghost after they find a secret room which belonged to a little girl many years before.

Also, Late for Halloween by Camilla Fegan about the witch Murgatroyd and her cat Hornsbydale who are exiled to Judy's garden for a year. She learns magic and makes a friend of the Chinese dragon Chinquintafizz who is conjured to life from an old tin tray.
I now have both of these, along with early Jean Ure, all the Alan Garners including Red Shift, Wynne Jones, and the absolutely stunning and sinister Devil on the Road by Robert Westall.

Takver no I haven't re-read "Children of the Oregon Trail" as an adult, and thanks to your advice I won't bother!

The Patchwork Cat

Another Rebecca's World fan here. I think it was read on Jackanory with different illustrations to the book, as I can clearly remember quite different images. I got so obsessed with finding it that I did buy a stupidly-priced one, and I will forever be annoyed that I only paid slightly less than I could have done a month previously, to get a signed copy...

DS, thankfully, loved it.

Can anyone else remember The Nargun and the Stars?

Had a creepy one from the library called "After the First Death". About a girl who's driving a school bus to nursery school when it get hijacked. They drug the children and try negotiating over them. They then kill one of them I think the girl ends up fancying one of the hijackers who then kills her.By someone like Robert Swindells.
Gave me nightmares.

DeeWe that one is by Robert Cormier, who also wrote The Chocolate War, another excellent and creepy novel. I always remember that the girl in After The First Death has a weak bladder and is constantly worried about wetting herself!

Robert Swindells wrote Brother In The Land, among many others.

Robert Westall wrote one of my teen self's favourite books, Futuretrack 5, as well as lots more.

Lots of Roberts!

That's the one! I remember the weak bladder too. Rather strangely clearer than some of the violence which scared me so at the time.

How have I missed this thread? Some of my more obscure favourites:

'An Old-Fashioned Girl' By Louisa May Alcott.

'Roller Skates' by Ruth Sawyer.

"The Saucepan Journey' by Edith Unnerstad.

Thanks to the wonders of t'interweb I have managed to compile a complete collection of Gillian Avery's books, some of which I'd never read before! Took me 2 years to find an affordable copy of 'James Without Thomas'. I also tracked down a copy (in America) of 'So Wild the Heart' by Geoffrey Trease - a historical romance for teens, set in early 19th century Italy, which I read in the school library and never managed to discover again. I love all the 1960s historical writers, Leon Garfield, Cynthia Harnett Elizabeth Sutcliffe, and have gradually replaced favourites which have fallen apart over the past 40 years.

Am trying to convince DH these are all highly collectable 'investments' .

Am trying to convince DH these are all highly collectable 'investments'

I have the same issue. I even managed to find an article for him where Malcolm Saville books were named as some of the best investments that year. He pointed out that if I never planned on selling them then they weren't an investment, more an asset.

He was also rather non-plussed when they were talking about extensive flooding in our area and I said I wasn't worried as there was nothing on ground level we couldn't replace. He looked round at the computers, carpets, etc and I pointed out it was fine as my collectable books were almost entirely on the top two shelves. He didn't seem to find it the comfort I found.

Only on page 5 so far. Remembering lots of these books. And oh my god, I had the biggest crush on Robbie in the trebizon books .

The really obscure book I've just remembered is "the children who lived in a barn". Parents lost in a plane crash, children kicked out of home, they learn to fend for themselves. Their surname is "Dunnet". Brilliant book.

The one in the zoo was by Donald bisset I think (with the animal,stories).

Flat Stanley, The Jolly Postman (not v obscure, just great!) Harriet The Spy. Blyton's 'The Secret Island'.

Oh and 'Choose your own adventure' books were fab!

I loved the children who lived in a barn! And I have just bought a modern South African version of a hay box because I always wanted to try one.

Love Harnett, Sutcliff, the Happy Orpheline, Eloise, Orlando, Carbonel, Kate Seredy esp the open gate, didn't realise not now Bernard came in English as have only got pas maintenant Bernard, the earlier Noel Streatfeilds, fatty puffs and Thinnifers, 100 million francs, the day the ceiling fell down, children if the Oregon trail ( recently read the original memoirs) the owl service, a traveller in time

Other obscure books
Ferdinand the Bull - reputed to have been banned by the US censor..
And still she wished for company ( spooky)
The witch's daughter
Sally's family
Susannah and the Mounties
An improbable series about twins, each book being about twins from diff countries
I can jump puddles
Girl of the limberlost
The cuckoo clock

Ps, you have to simmer the casserole or whatever for twenty minutes before you out it in the hay box. But it's then fantastic. Goes on all picnics now. It looks like a large pumpkin, not a hay box though.

Oh and the crown of violet. Brilliant trease.

The Minnipins by Carole Kendall. A sort of sub Tolkien fantasy about a group of misfits/freethinking rebels - parts of the concept quite ingenius, some of it dodgy. I still re-read it most years.

My favourite book ever is just a hazy memory - a story about a boy who turns into a cat and is befriended by a girl cat. I remember being heartbroken by it but can't remember quite why. Has anybody read it?

Was it Jennie by Paul Gallico? I remember that one.

Yes! That's it, thank you! Have just found it on Amazon and bought it for my Kindle - perhaps not as obscure as I thought.
Love this thread, so many memories, and I now have a very long reading list!

Not obscure in its day but maybe moreso now, Gobbolino The Witch's Cat by Ursula Moray Williams. Teacher read it to us in school, around 1969 and then I read and re-read it myself.

Again, not obscure then but maybe now - Lizzie Dripping, by Helen Cresswell.

The Machine Gunners, Robert Westall. Discovered this as an adult but it is a great kids' book.

Z For Zachariah - read as a teenager - very bleak but was an emo before we had the word 'emo'.