The Edge of the Cloud

Author	Pauline Clarke
ISBN	0698201175

Beneath a floorboard in the old farmhouse into which his family has just moved, eight-year-old Max Morley discovers twelve time-worn wooden soldiers. Under his careful watch, the "Twelves" come to life, each possessing a name and a distinct personality. As Max soon learns, they share a history filled...

Author	Gene Kemp
ISBN	0745103308

An interesting children's book from the 1970s, which succeeds largely on the strength of it's fine grasp of child psychology and language, and its naturalistically rambling, inconclusive plot. I liked it as a child because it felt less like a "story", and more like a slice of life of a real person - albeit...

Author	Noel Streatfeild
ISBN	0440414229

This is one of those "hovering on the edge of ugliness" Streatfeild books, where everyone seems to blame these two kids for things entirely out of their control. It's awful.

And they have to be the ones to be the adults, to forgive and overlook and make their own places. I want to cry when Santa has...

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	Tim Bowler
ISBN	0689848048

Fifteen-year-old Jess's grandfather has just had a major heart attack, but he insists he finish his painting, River Boy. At first, Jess cannot understand why this painting is so important to her grandfather, especially since there doesn't seem to be any boy in it at all. But while swimming in the river...

Author	Eric Linklater
ISBN	1590171004

Winner of the Carnegie Medal

In the English village of Midmeddlecum, Major Palfrey asks his two daughters to behave themselves while he is off at war. Sighs Dinah, "I think that we are quite likely to be bad, however hard we try not to be," and her sister Dorinda adds helpfully, "Very often, when...

Author	Peter Dickinson
ISBN	0552528129

An attack in the dark, screams, burning huts...Thirteen-year-old Theodore crouches under the trees. His father's Mission has been destroyed. His father is dead. Theodore is on his own, fleeing the Chinese rebels of the Boxer uprising.Then Mrs Jones appears. A botanist, Mrs Jones is a feisty, aging,...

Author	Susan Price
ISBN	0571153402

“In a place far distant from where you are now grows an oak-tree by a lake.
Round the oak’s trunk is a chain of golden links.
Tethered to the chain is a learned cat, and this most learned of all cats walks round and round the tree continually.
As it walks one way, it sings songs.
As it walks...

Author	Gillian Rubinstein
ISBN	0689806027

After Tod's father abandoned the family, his mother moved them into their grandmother's crowded house. Overwhelmed at school, Tod finds himself lagging behind his classmates and becoming entangled in a destructive gang. After Tod compassionately buries a dead fox, a fox-spirit offers him the chance...

Author

Robert Westall

The Scarecrows is creepy, but behind it all there's a moral about anger, frustration and how you should face it rather than run away from it. The main character's eerie adventure as he holes up in an abandoned mill is easy for readers to relate to. Everyone has something that they want to run away...

Author

Ana María Matute

Jujú pasa las tardes en el desván de la casa, que se ha convertido en su barco, el Ulises, la señorita Florentina (una paloma) y su fiel Contramaestre (un perrito) le acompañan en todas sus aventuras. Los días de Jujú son más bien aburridos. Le han criado tres tías solteronas, que le encontraron...

Author	Ursula Dubosarsky
ISBN	1596432659

Funny, tough-minded and tender, this is the story of Matilda and her two sisters growing up in Sydney, Australia, in the early 1950s. Their father is mentally unstable and largely absent, their mother is possibly in the thrall of his brother, and a headline-making Russian spy defection is taking...

Author	Cynthia Harnett
ISBN	0140301534

Considering how important the wool trade was to the development of early-modern Britain, it is surprising how few novels deal with the business of wool. Those written for young readers are even scarcer. The Wool-Pack helps fill the gap.

This is historical fiction rather than history, written...

Author

Arthur Ransome

The crew's on holiday, and they turn their energies to mining for gold, aided by pigeon messengers Homer, Sophocles, and Sappho. The adventurers comb the nearby hills for a fabled lost claim, while being shadowed by a mysterious figure they dub "squashy hat." Undeterred by drought, sudden brushfires,...

Author	Theresa Breslin
ISBN	0749744804

I was very disappointed after finishing this book, and I don't know on what grounds it won the Carnegie Medal.
In short, it deals with too many plots and genres at the same time, not taking any of them seriously.
It starts as a realistic novel, describing the desolate situation of a boy trying to...

Author	James Moloney
ISBN	0702224995

When Dougy's sister Gracey is picked for the state athletics championships, not everybody in their small bush town in pleased. 'Aborigines get special treatment', some of the angry white people say. The championships change everything for Gracey and trigger dramatic events in the town too: black...

Author	Zep
ISBN	2723415937

C'est pô vrai ? Vous connaissez pô Titeuf ? C'est nul, ça. Méganul, même. J'sais pô, moi, faites un effort, quand même. Avec sa bouille toute ronde et sa touffe blonde dressée sur le crâne, c'est un héros moderne des cours de récré. À la fois naïf, plein d'enthousiasme et gentil comme...

Author	David Hill
ISBN	0140370560

See Ya Simon is the kind of book that everyone should read at least once in their lifetime.

While reading See Ya Simon I fell in love with both Simon and Nathan, they are both really great guys and the best friends that could ever exist. All of the characters are that great.

This book is relatively...

Author	Lucy M. Boston
ISBN	0152025898

L. M. Boston's thrilling and chilling tales of Green Knowe, a haunted manor deep in an overgrown garden in the English countryside, have been entertaining readers for half a century. Now the children of Green Knowe--both alive and ghostly--are back in appealing new editions.
The spooky original...

Author	Geraldine McCaughrean
ISBN	0192752030

Ailsa doesn't trust MCC Berkshire, the mysterious man helping out in her mother's antique shop. He tells wonderful stories about all the antiques, and his stories persuade the customers to buy the items he talks about, but everything he says is a pack of lies. Isn't it?

The story of Ailsa and...

Author

Peter Pohl

Jan fällt auf. Weil er artistisch Fahrrad fahren kann, rote Haare hat und so weiche Gesichtszüge, dass viele ihn für ein Mädchen halten. Doch er kann auch so zuschlagen, dass er bald vor jeder Anpöbelei sicher ist. Da ist aber noch ein Geheimnis um Jan. Niemand kennt seine Adresse und seinen Nachnamen...

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	G.A. Henty
ISBN	1406813168

Just because something was written over a century ago, that does not mean it was written well. That has been hammered home in ‘With Clive in India’.

It is one of the books freely available on ManyBooks.net, though I picked my copy up a few years ago in Poundland. Three nineteenth-century...

Author	Rosemary Sutcliff
ISBN	0192755064

Rosemary Sutcliff's books so often bring a strange, tearful, lovely lump to my throat, and a strange, gut-wrenching mist to my eyes that tugs at my heart strings so beautifully. How does she do it, I wonder?

'I sometimes think that we stand at sunset,' Eugenus said after a pause. 'It may be that...

Author	Berlie Doherty
ISBN	0141311762

There are literally no redeeming qualities about this book.

The plot wasn't interesting, I couldn't sympathise with the characters, and it honestly felt like I was reading a first draft. Also, there seems to be a distinct aversion to commas, what did the comma ever do to you?

It also...