The Demon Headmaster
10 best books like The Demon Headmaster (Gillian Cross): The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Five Children and It, Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy, The Worst Witch, Stig of the Dump, The Animals of Farthing Wood, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, The Boy At the Back of the Class, Double Act, Carrie's War
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
| Author | Joan Aiken |
| ISBN | 0385327900 |
Wicked wolves and a grim governess threaten Bonnie and her cousin Sylvia when Bonnie's parents leave Willoughby Chase for a sea voyage. Left in the care of the cruel Miss Slighcarp, the girls can hardly believe what is happening to their once happy home. The servants are dismissed, the furniture is sold,...
| Author | E. Nesbit |
| ISBN | 0140367357 |
I read Five Children and It with the Women’s Classic Literature Enthusiasts group and enjoyed it immensely. If you like Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and its series' mates by Betty MacDonald, you will like Five Children and It. The ideal child reader of this book is between second and fifth grade, with a fondness...
Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy
| Author | Lynley Dodd |
| ISBN | 0670913502 |
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my BEDTIME STORIES list.
I have a little boy...
| Author | Jill Murphy |
| ISBN | 0141319623 |
This is the perfect book for young reluctant readers.
It’s engaging, fun, fast-paced and actually a really great story. There’s a magic school, great friendship, antiheroes and a series of unfortunate events.
And let’s not forget the lovely illustrations. This is no Harry...
| Author | Clive King |
| ISBN | 0140364501 |
This book surprised me. I was expecting it to be a simple, fun, mildly enjoyable read, which I would have better appreciated had I read it at 9 years old (which is when everyone else seemed to read it). Instead, I was wowed by the levels of humour and social commentary and astute observation and depth within...
| Author | Colin Dann |
| ISBN | 1405225521 |
A group of forest animals unite to help each other to safety in this classic tale of tolerance, cooperation, survival, and friendship. When bulldozers enter Farthing Wood, the animals must escape before their homes are destroyed. They promise to stick together and protect each other—but then they...
The Tiger Who Came to Tea
| Author | Judith Kerr |
| ISBN | 0006640613 |
I learnt important life lessons from this book:
*Don't try to drink all the water from the tap
*Drinking tea from the pot via the spout gets you a mouth full of tea leaves
*A single tin of tiger food will fill you up as much as an entire household full of food
The story is a simple one - what...
The Boy At the Back of the Class
There used to be an empty chair at the back of my class, but now a new boy called Ahmet is sitting in it.
He's eight years old (just like me), but he's very strange. He never talks and never smiles and doesn't like sweets - not even lemon sherbets, which are my favourite!
But the truth is, Ahmet...
| Author | Jacqueline Wilson |
| ISBN | 0440867592 |
Ruby and Garnet are ten-year-old twins. They're identical, and they do EVERYTHING together, especially since their mother died three years earlier - but they couldn't be more different. Bossy, bouncy, funny Ruby loves to take charge, and is desperate to be a famous actress, while quiet, sensitive,...
| Author | Nina Bawden |
| ISBN | 0140364560 |
Albert, Carrie and young Nick are war-time evacuees whose lives get so tangled up with the people they've come to live among that the war and their real families seem to belong to another world. Carrie and Nick are billeted in Wales with old Mr Evans, who is so mean and cold, and his timid mouse of a sister,...
George's Marvellous Medicine
| Author | Roald Dahl |
| ISBN | 0224064908 |
George's Grandma is a grizzly, grumpy, selfish old woman with pale brown teeth and a small puckered up mouth like a dog's bottom. Four times a day she takes a large spoonful of medicine, but it doesn't seem to do her any good. She's always just as poisonous after she's taken it as she was before. When George...
| Author | Margaret Mahy |
| ISBN | 0140363254 |
If I could use one word to describe this novel... it would be - odd. Which makes it genuinely discordant and spooky for a psychological drama, dotted with very beautiful chilling descriptions... but the strange choice to make the novel carry itself entirely on dialogue means it runs out of steam very...
| Author | Jacqueline Wilson |
| ISBN | 0440863686 |
Marigold loves her daughters a lot. But she loves herself far more. She sees them as children to be formed in her own egotistical image to reflect what she wants the world to think of her. She has one adoring child and one who is beginning to want her own life and not want to look after her mother anymore. Both...
| Author | Judith Kerr |
| ISBN | 0001955071 |
Delightful! Mog is so endearing. I loved how Debbie, the girl in the house, sticks by Mog, even when she has her nightmare about a tiger. (That double page illustration is my favorite picture in the book.) The illustrations are cute. The story is mostly funny, with a bit of sadness, and it has a fun twist...
| Author | Dick King-Smith |
| ISBN | 0141317221 |
The Hodgeheg by Dick King-Smith – This was quite the treasure of a book! I found it on the shelf when I was weeding the fiction section and had the mental conversation of “Dick King-Smith- how can I weed his books? They’re fantastic. Well, I’ll look through each one and pull ones that have deteriorated…...
The Worst Witch Strikes Again
| Author | Jill Murphy |
| ISBN | 0140313486 |
Mildred’s life is about to get even more complicated!
See, she’s the Worst Witch. Nothing falls into place around her. This semester, there’s a new witch in town and she falls into Mildred’s responsibility.
I had more fun reading this book than the last (and first). Enid is...
| Author | Nicholas Fisk |
| ISBN | 0140307451 |
Great Aunt Emma is no ordinary old lady. But why is she so strange? For a start, she just appeared, grinning, on the doorstep, as if from nowhere. Why have Mum and Dad never mentioned her before—after all, she is supposed to be Granny's sister, isn't she?Soon Tim and Beth start noticing more and more odd...
| Author | Anne Fine |
| ISBN | 0140340718 |
"Growing up is a long and confusing business. I try to show that the battle through the chaos is worthwhile and can, at times, be seen as very funny" (Fine, 1994.)
I recall reading this book in year five and feeling really grown up; it was and still is more of a mature take on children’s literature....
| Author | David Walliams |
| ISBN | 0008342571 |
The new children’s book from No. 1 bestselling author David Walliams – a deliciously daft Tall Story of a child who had everything, but still wanted more. Illustrated by artistic genius, Tony Ross.
Meet the Meeks!
Myrtle Meek has everything she could possibly want....
From No. 1 bestselling children’s author, David Walliams comes his biggest and most epic adventure yet! Illustrated by the artistic genius Tony Ross.
This is the story of a ten-year-old orphan and a 10,000-year-old mammoth…
Read all about it! Read all about it!
ICE...
| Author | Richmal Crompton |
| ISBN | 0333534085 |
There were some quite interesting things to do outside. In the road there were puddles, and the sensation of walking through a puddle, as every boy knows, is a very pleasant one. The hedges, when shaken, sent quite a shower bath down upon the shaker, which also is a pleasant sensation. The ditch was full...
The Diary of a Killer Cat
| Author | Anne Fine |
| ISBN | 0374317798 |
The hilarious confessions of a ferocious feline
Poor Ellie is horrified when her cat, Tuffy, drags a dead bird into the house. Then a mouse. Before long, another apparent victim arrives though the cat-door. Can softhearted Ellie get her beloved pet to change his wild, wild ways before he ends...
