The Return of the Twelves

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	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	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	Rumer Godden
ISBN	1405088567

This book helped me through one of the hardest times in my childhood.

Long story, but when we emigrated from Canada to New Zealand, we shifted around a little bit before moving to the Eastern Suburbs of Auckland. At school, once the novelty of having a foreigner in their midst wore off, I just didn't...

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	T.H. White
ISBN	1590171039

"She saw: first, a square opening, about eight inches wide, in the lowest step...finally she saw that there was a walnut shell, or half one, outside the nearest door...she went to look at the shell—but looked with the greatest astonishment. There was a baby in it."

So ten-year-old Maria,...

Author	B.B.
ISBN	0192719467

The last four gnomes in Britain live by a Warwickshire brook. But when one of them decides to go and explore and doesn't return, it's up to the remaining three to build a boat and set out to find him. This is the story of the gnomes' epic journey in search of Cloudberry and is set against the background of the...

Author	Jane Langton
ISBN	0064401243

When Prince Krishna is called away, he leaves behind some strict instructions for the Hall children about one of the openings in the mysterious summerhouse: Keep Out! As Eddy and Eleanor swing through each of the other openings, they refuse to break the rule, even as their temptation grows. But when...

Author	C. Day-Lewis
ISBN	0435120018

“This is a really super story—I shold know, I wrote it. My name is George, and I’m Ted’s second-in-command: Ted is is centre-forward of the Junior XI at King’s School in Otterbury and a first class chap. He’s the leader of our company, and the story began with our battle against Toppy’s...

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

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	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

Bruce Robertson

Now in many ways Bruce Robertson's Marguerite Makes a Book does a truly wonderful job with both meticulous detail and engagement showing and demonstrating how a hand-painted (illuminated) Mediaeval book is (or more to the point how such a tome generally was) created, was made (and indeed also why these...

Author	Barbara Sleigh
ISBN	0140304940

A long-awaited reissue of the much-loved sequel to Carbonel, King of the Cats. In this second story, published over forty years ago, Carbonel has been summoned to appear before the Great Cat but before he goes he has to find someone to look after his two royal kittens. And so he tracks down his young friends...

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	Tessa Duder
ISBN	0553290207

'I have always known that in another life I was-or will be-a dolphin. I am a pink human, caught in a net of ambition and years of hard work. In a few minutes I will dive into artificially turquoise water waiting at my feet. A minute later I'll either be ecstatic or a failure.'Fifteen-year-old swimming champ...

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	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	Laurie B. Friedman
ISBN	0822587394

EDIT on 12/28: I changed this from 5 to 3 stars given that the 5 star rating was based partially on the assumption that this was a true story and some of it was also based on the post story "non-fction" material. It might be a 4 star book for me, even as a fictional book, but I read it as non-fiction (which I just...