Well-written modern fairy tales ...

[Bink]

I have just, by an utterly lovely stroke of luck (dd was lent her teacher's own copy as a special extra reading book), been able to re-read Lucy Boston's The Castle of Yew, which is otherwise out of print.

It belongs to a very special category of short, enchanting, very finely-written things - Ted Hughes' The Iron Man is the other one which springs to mind. And maybe Kipling's "How the Whale got its Throat" has the same quality.

If you know what I mean, can you add anything to the list?

Yay

I do love MN

popsycal - thanks! - but even more wonderfully dd's teacher & her assistant (I told them I'd been looking for it for ever) have said that we can keep Castle of Yew as a present. Isn't that lovely of them?

Yes, Joan Aitken absolutely goes on the "if you liked this, you may like ..." list. The others mentioned I don't know, so that's treasure hunt in store.

NQC, Calvino thing isn't something I've heard of at all ... more details pls?

Not modern at all, but the mention of Jan Pienkowski reminded me of The Amber Mountain , which is beautiful and definitely fits the brief.

Oooh - the Baba Yaga story with the witch's house shaped like an egg on a chicken's foot..he girl who lived in a bus..Necklace of raindrops was one of my frequent borrows from the library too.

LOve, LOVE proper, slightly scary fairy tales. (dd1 currently into the desperately saccharine rainbow fairies - yuk.)

this is lovely.

i have fond necklace of raindrops and also kingdom under the sea at work complete with illustrations

baba yaga is in kindom under the sea....

very excited :P)

a few hard back additions here marina of kingdom under the sea...

omg
i have just found a book which i have - given to me from my godmother which was hers....
£125 on abebooks.....
mine is in good nick AND signed by the author...

just as another little aside...I read my class the baba yaga story the other day and they LOVED it!
even the hard lads