The Wouldbegoods
10 best books like The Wouldbegoods (E. Nesbit): The Land of Green Ginger, What Katy Did at School, The Well-Wishers, The Dolls' House, The Family from One End Street, The Midnight Folk, The Magic Summer, An Enemy at Green Knowe, The Peterkin Papers, Winona's Pony Cart
This beloved classic is a funny, clever, and original novel that opens with Aladdin, now Emperor of China, trying to decide what to name his new son, a child who won't stop talking and is already far too articulate for his own good. The Genie of the Lamp announces that Abu Ali should be the child's name and...
| Author | Susan Coolidge |
| ISBN | 1406515280 |
What Katy Did at School is a sequel to “What Katy Did”, and written a year later, in 1873. Like many girls, I read and enjoyed these novels about the Carr family, written by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, using the pen name Susan Coolidge. The style and concerns are rather like those of “Little Women”,...
| Author | Edward Eager |
| ISBN | 0152949941 |
Just when the children thought the magic in the old well was all played out (that is, if it was magic!) and had sworn an oath in blood not to make any more wishes until the well gave them a sign, Gordy—in a reckless moment—told it to get going with its magic, or else! Something certainly did begin to happen...
| Author | Rumer Godden |
| ISBN | 0330442554 |
Tottie is a loving little wooden doll who lives with her family in a shoebox. The doll family are owned by two sisters, Emily and Charlotte, and are very happy, except for one thing: they long for a proper home. To their delight, their wish comes true when Emily and Charlotte fix up a Victorian dolls' house...
| Author | Eve Garnett |
| ISBN | 0141317167 |
Eve Garnett's 1937 novel The Family from One End Street might well read a bit too obviously episodically for those readers who always do desire and crave a specific and mostly straightforward plot line in a novel, and is also and indeed (as well as naturally) an object, a book of its time, of late 1930s England...
| Author | John Masefield |
| ISBN | 0006724167 |
‘Don’t you have any fear, Kay. We’re the guards, we are. We hear that the house has gone all to sixes and sevens since we left it, but that’s going to be remedied now’
Young Kay Harker lives in an old house in the country, filled with portraits of his ancestors. His only companions are...
| Author | Noel Streatfeild |
| ISBN | 0394816315 |
Four children are sent from London to live for the summer with an eccentric poetry quoting Aunt in a rural part of Ireland. They are left to fend for themselves and in the process find friendship and enjoyment in day to day tasks. The children find that there are things to gain from their self sufficient...
| Author | Lucy M. Boston |
| ISBN | 0152024816 |
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 | Lucretia P. Hale |
| ISBN | 1590172124 |
Before Amelia Bedelia and the Stupids there were the Peterkins. The Peterkin Papers collects all of Lucretia Hale’s beloved tales of a thoroughly silly family.
The Peterkin Papers record the antics of the most memorably and hopelessly bumbling of respectable American families. Confronted...
| Author | Maud Hart Lovelace |
| ISBN | 0064408604 |
Welcome back to Deep Valley!Winona Root is almost eight years old. More than anything in the world, she wants a pony for her birthday. She wishes so hard for a pony that she's sure to get one--at least, that's what she tells her friends Betsy, Tacy, and Tib. It's only when the exciting day grows near that...
| Author | Elizabeth Enright |
| ISBN | 0152842802 |
Tatsinda is considered an outsider by the people of the Tatrajanni kingdom. Her talent as a weaver has ensured that she can support herself--and perhaps win the love of the handsome Prince. But when an evil giant takes Tatsinda prisoner and plans to destroy the kingdom, it will take all the magic, skill,...
| Author | Arthur Ransome |
| ISBN | 0613789776 |
Apparently Evgenia, Mrs Ransome, didn't like this one at all. I really can't understand why: this is probably my favourite of the series, even though it lacks the Swallows. Perfectly paced, beautifully plotted, and back in the Lakes. What's not to like?
I have also always thought that this...
| Author | Elinor M. Brent-Dyer |
| ISBN | 0006925170 |
Well, I've reread about ten of these today (not going to rate them all, thinking of your poor feeds), and I've only got about twenty in the series, which must contain over fifty books...
I tend to divide the copies I've got into two sets. The first set is the beginning of the school, which is a boarding...
| Author | Louisa May Alcott |
| ISBN | 1406931187 |
"Written for my own amusement," says Alcott herself? Well, the original readers she won over with LITTLE WOMEN and LITTLE MEN probably scooped up this whole bouquet of charming stories, which probably left a favorable fragrance and a curiosity as to what Ms. Alcott's next offering would be. Today's...
