A beautifully written and intricate English children’s book. Kit’s family returns to their ancestral coal mining town to take care of his grandfather after his grandmother died. At home, his grandfather tells him stories of mining and spirits of the mines; at school, he falls in with Allie, a flamboyant girl who wants to be an actress, and Askew, a ( Read more... )

Frances “Frankie” Stein, the youngest child and only daughter of an emotionally distant scientist and single dad, obtains a bit of mysterious gray goo from his mysterious laboratory. With the help of a bit of her own blood and a fortuitous lightning strike-and, just as importantly, her own ability to see the resultant “It’s alive!!!” as a life to ( Read more... )

I have written before about my fondness for British children’s fantasy of a certain vintage. It’s atmospheric and well-written in a particular way that I like and don’t often see elsewhere. Even if I don’t think it’s entirely successful or to my taste, I’m never sorry I read it.

A Castle of Bone (1972) is an odd melding of two subgenres, the ( Read more... )

Poppy Brown is a lonely girl whose relationship with her mother has been troubled since her mother had a long hospital stay and Poppy had to live with foster parents. Possibly because of this or maybe just exacerbated by it, Poppy has a lying habit. They’re harmless lies, the sort many imaginative kids tell to get attention or because they’re bored ( Read more... )

I recently got to meet Layla (Sholio), which was just as awesome as I’d imagined. While we were on a long drive, we somehow managed to figure out that we’d loved the same book as kids, which was some kind of miracle as I couldn’t remember the title or most identifying details, she had gotten it with a missing first chapter, and it has editions with ( Read more... )

Please comment if you've read any of these or others by the same author.

View poll: Oldie Children's Books

Crossposted to http://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2156667.html. Comment here or there.

I’m afraid I did not like this at all. In fact, it was the first FMK book that I didn’t finish-I ditched it at about the halfway mark. And it’s a very short book, too: 133 pages ( Read more... )

View poll: FMK: Mostly Award-Winning British children's books

I have never read anything by any of these authors, and in most cases have only heard of them in the sense that I own one of their books. Anyone familiar with any of them?

Crossposted to http://rachelmanija. ( Read more... )

The winner of FMK # 1! Alas, I did not fall madly in love with it, but I did enjoy it. FMK is definitely off to a good start, because God knows how long that book has languished unread on my shelves. I'm pretty sure at least five years and possibly ten. But I'm very glad I finally got to it ( Read more... )

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