Enjoying children's classics

[Rayn22]

Rereading all my old favourites. Love getting cozy under a blanket with a cup of tea and a hob nob!
Just read;
5 children and it.
The railway children
Whole Narnia series

Just about to start Peter Pan.
Was an eighties child and having difficulty remembering what else I read.
Not the famous five as done them to death.

Any others you can recommend?

Not sure whether this would appeal to you, but there have been some excellent more recent books that are very much in the school of old children’s classics. I loved Five Children on the Western Front, Skylark’s War, Princess and the Suffragette, Midnight Guardians, When the Sky Falls, Tyger. Loads more too. Children’s literature is very much in a golden age if you can get past the wall of celebrity nonsense and find a decent library or bookshop with some proper choice.

I knew I’d forget some!

The Moomin series by Tove Jansson, especially Moominpappa at Sea, Moominland Midwinter and Moominvalley in November
Mardie’s Adventures by Astrid Lindgren,
Hugo and Josephine series by Maria Gripe,
The House of Sixty Fathers by Meindert de Jongh,
All Rosemary Sutcliffe,
All Cynthia Harnett,
Charlotte’s Web by EB White,
Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer,
Elizabeth Goudge’s children’s books, especially The Little White Horse, Linnets and Valerians and Henrietta’s House
John Christopher’s Tripods series and Empty World

Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr

When Marnie Was There by Joan G Robinson.

A wrinkle in time
from the mixed up files of mrs Basel e frankweiler
phantom tollbooth
watership down
most of Ronald Dahl
holes
bridge to terabithia
my side of the mountain

Yes to Marianne Dreams - so scary! Not the light! Not the light!

Glorious lists, everyone. I’ve recently been going through all our old children’s books at my parents house and so many of these are on those shelves (if they haven’t been swept onto mine).

My Friend Mr Leakey
Island of the Blue Dolphins
Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass
The Box of Drlights

Rosa Guy books

I loved that book! My Mum did German at school way back in the 1940s and I think may have read the book in class. She had fond memories of it and may have suggested borrowing it from the library. I also read Lisa and Lottie, adapted for the film The Parent Trap.

Has anyone mentioned the Alanna books yet? Tamora Pierce. Loved those as a child!

The children's section in my local library is littered with celebrity books.

Robert westall especially of course the machine gunners

I've just started rereading Moondial.

I loved Jenny Nimmo’s books as a preteen

Boarding school - Malory Towers, St Clare’s, The Naughtiest Girl (all Enid Blyton), Trebizon (Anne Digby)

Loved loads of these (especially Antonia Forrest, Noel Streatfield, Arthur Ransome) but my absolute favourite was Diana Wynne Jones.

When I was about 11 I read several books by Gillian Avery, who was very successful in her day but sadly now mostly forgotten, I think. I was so pleased as an adult to get hold of a copy of The Warden's Niece from an online secondhand bookseller. What a boon the internet has been for getting hold of old books!

Also delighted to see a mention of Cynthia Harnett, whose books I adored.

Has anyone mentioned Alan Garner or Leon Garfield? More prolific and well-known writers from my childhood. Alan Garner's books were what would now be labelled as Young Adult, I think (in my childhood there were children's books and there were adult books and nothing to bridge the gap).

Don't want to bring the thread down but I also really liked the books of William Mayne, and was horrified to learn decades later that he had been convicted of child sexual abuse and sent to prison. I don't think I could re-read those now.

I forgot A Traveller in Time! Also Diana Wynne Jones.

Oh, and Penelope Lively’s children’s books like A Stitch in Time.

And Ballet Shoes.

I just adored these books - think I reread them once a year !

The Twelfth Day of July by Joan Lingard, and the follow up Across the Barricades.

Those times were troubled. I've always lived Big cities and there was always a background fear of something happening.

Joan Aiken - The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Black Hearts in Battersea and
Midnight is a Place.

Richmail Crompton's

Just William series

While ostensibly a children's series, these are even more enjoyable as an adult do think they deserve mention in this thread.

Omg. And blitz cat. ♥️♥️♥️

Also, flambards by k m peyton.

Marianne Dreams