The Owl Service

Author	Penelope Farmer
ISBN	1590172213

A time-travel story that is both a poignant exploration of human identity and an absorbing tale of suspense.

It's natural to feel a little out of place when you're the new girl, but when Charlotte Makepeace wakes up after her first night at boarding school, she's baffled: everyone thinks she's...

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	Diana Wynne Jones
ISBN	0064473597

Ayna could predict the future.
Cari could find what was lost.
Gair thought he was ordinary. The three children of Gest, the chief of Garholt, know the perils of the Moor on which they live. The Dorig, their people's enemies, are cold-blooded, fierce underwater creatures who terrify anyone...

Author

Patricia Wrightson

Few books had as profound an impact on me when I was growing up. This haunting tale of a lonely boy discovering an ancient stone Nargun, a creature straight from Aboriginal mythology, on his uncle's rural property had me spellbound. It still does. Wrightson, who died in 2010, was criticised for using...

Author	K.M. Peyton
ISBN	0192750232

Christina and Will have escaped Flambards for London with their heads full of dreams, only to find a whole new set of problems. Not only the basic ones of work and a place to live, but Will's single-minded ambition to desing and pilot flying machines, which terrify Christina every time he leaves the ground....

Author	Leon Garfield
ISBN	0374467625

This brilliant, picaresque novel follows the adventures of an illiterate young ragamuffin known only as Smith. Smith picks the pocket of a stranger, only to witness immediately the strangers murder. Smiths booty from the theft is an Important Document, no doubt worth quite a lot to somebody, which...

Author	Alison Uttley
ISBN	0140309314

*** 4 ***

I love the way this author tells a children's story! It has the feel of a fairy tale, but using time travel as a means to connect a girl living in the 1930's Chelsea, England with the 16th century Tudor period. The book itself was published in 1939 and the author was one of J. R. R. Tolkien's...

Author	Joan Aiken
ISBN	0395971284

Simon, the foundling from The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, arrives in London to meet an old friend and pursue the study of painting. Instead he finds himself unwittingly in the middle of a wicked crew's fiendish caper to overthrow the good King James and the Duke and Duchess of Battersea. With the help...

Author	Catherine Storr
ISBN	0571202128

Ill and bored with having to stay in bed, Marianne picks up a pencil and starts doodling - a house, a garden, a boy at the window. That night she has an extraordinary dream. She is transported into her own picture, and as she explores further she soon realises she is not alone. The boy at the window is called...

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	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	Penelope Lively
ISBN	1405225424

Annual re-read. First encountered at the age of ten, in primary school (in fact I still have Mrs. Halsall's own copy, sorry, Miss) and loved since. Lively's enduring ghost story tells of James Harrison being haunted by a bad-tempered C17th poltergeist whose distaste of the modern world manifests itself...

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	Nina Bawden
ISBN	0140309446

Could you possibly have guessed that this book with such a hyper-cute cover has the most inexplicably cruel ending I've ever seen in children's literature?

If 'The Peppermint Pig' (1975) by Nina Bawden was a book for adults, I would have rated it much higher. I am impressed by its nostalgic beauty...

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	Beverley Nichols
ISBN	0006709931

One of my absolute favourite books from my childhood, which I think has had a great deal to do with my love of nature throughout my life.
I still yearn for the Shop Under the Willow Tree.

I still think of trying to gather some 'sleepo' when I can't get to sleep at night.

"Whenever a cat...

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...