Recommended children's booklists sorted by age or topic

Topic: Reading for Pleasure

Cowgirl

Chapter book

Gemma lives on the grim Mawr Estate in South Wales, where it feels as if everyone has given up hope. When she meets Kate and her herd of cows, they unite in a quest to save their bovine friends from the abattoir. Tall, angry Kate doesn’t fit in at school and is the target of bullies and at first Gemma doesn’t want to be seen with her because this might make her a target too. But by uniting the community in their cause to save the herd, Kate and Gemma are soon seen in a new light.

Tyger, Tyger

Wiliam Blake

Poetry

This is the title of a poem and included in a collection illustrated by the poet called Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794). His tiger in his illustration is a very friendly looking beast but the words ring out like bells and trumpets, blasting us with the power of the tiger. It is a poem that demands to be read aloud and haunted me as I wrote The Tigers in the Tower, so much so that I named the book’s sections after images from the piece. I have a strong memory associated with it. When I was ten, my primary school teacher wrote it up on a blackboard one day (yes, with chalk!) and we all had to copy and learn it if we could. That was an old-fashioned way of teaching even then. However, the poem is still in my mind as I write this, like a spell I can chant to summon the spirit of the tiger! Have a go. Here are a few lines…

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Fuzzy Mud

Louis Sachar

Chapter book

Marshall and Tamaya walk to school together every day, but Marshall always leaves Tamaya at the gate, because if he’s seen with a younger kid that will only give more fuel to his bully. Chad makes Marshall’s life miserable and Marshall thinks he’s powerless to stop it. Then one day, Marshall and Tamaya take a shortcut through the woods and Chad follows. But there’s a reason they usually avoid the woods – they’re infested with a biohazard, fuzzy mud! When Tamaya and Chad both get contaminated, it’s up to Marshall to save them both. I love Louis Sachar’s writing and his is one of the most realistic depictions of bullying I’ve read for this age group.

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

Alan Garner

Chapter book

This book was the first stepping point for me. I took a copy of this book to a circle of trees in Brockwell Park in London, near where I lived, and sat down on a stump and started reading. I was instantly transported to an imaginary world that I thought I had forgotten about – one filled with wizards and sleeping knights and unimaginable evil forces. Those first few mythical pages reminded me how much I loved folk tales – I loved how evil characters were invoked through nature and Grimnir smelling of “foul waters”. It reminded me of stories about creatures like Nuckelavee, Redcap, Black Annis and Jenny Greenteeth – all characters who I was desperate to in include in The Midnight Guardians, and some of which I did, but I had to be sparing!

The Dark is Rising

Susan Cooper

Chapter book

This book was instrumental for me, too – a frankly terrifying story of a boy being pulled into an ancient, mythic battle fought in the land right before us, which we cannot see but whose outcome affects us enormously. The way Cooper summons up the sense of being outside on a winter day is just perfect: special and liberating and sinister and silent all at once. The figure of The Black Rider was a huge inspiration for the character of The Midwinter King in The Midnight Guardians – in the first draft, Col was pursued not by the Lord of all Darkness, but by a sort of bounty hunter figure.

The Box of Delights

John Masefield & Quentin Blake

Chapter book

I went to see Piers Torday’s adaptation of The Box of Delights at Wilton’s Music Hall back in 2017, and it couldn’t have come at a better time for me. It reminded me exactly of the sort of thing I was trying to do in my own book: chiefly, it reminded me of the legend of Herne the Hunter, who lived and died in (and supposedly still haunts) Windsor Great Park where I grew up. I realised that a huge part of my book was about those stories I’d heard as a child about the park, and this terrifying figure of a man with antlers who some say could still be seen there. He doesn’t feature in the book – but in searching for a similar figures, I remembered The Green Man, who becomes an instrumental part of the plot and world of The Midnight Guardians.

PS: I tried to find the oak tree where Herne the Hunter supposedly hanged himself, but it’s now part of Prince Andrew’s private golf course, and the security guard patiently informed me that he would tazer me if I tried to enter.

The BFG

Quentin Blake & Roald Dahl

Chapter book

It wasn’t until I was two drafts into The Midnight Guardians that I realised I was missing something vitally important to British folklore – giants! They’re integral to our national stories, particularly English ones. The story goes that Brutus of Troy came to Britannia and fought “the descendants of Albion” – a number of giants that lived in Cornwall – fought one called Gogmagog and defeated him. I love the idea that the inhabitants of Britain used to be enormous, mean smelly giants that kept fighting each other, and gave us the rivers and mountains and stone circles that we know today. It made me think about the giant story that I was raised on – the BFG! Those giant names alone are worth the entry fee: Bloodbottler, Bonecruncher, Fleshlumpeater… In The Midnight Guardians, there are two giants called Gog and Magog, which is a reference to the two statues that were destroyed in the raid of 28th December 1940 – they’re the protectors of the City of London, and their effigies are still carried in the Lord Mayor’s Show each year.

The Complete Chronicles of Narnia

C.S. Lewis & Pauline Baynes

Chapter book

All seven tales in The Chronicles of Narnia are bound together, with full-colour illustrations, in one magnificent hardcover volume with a personal introduction by Douglas Gresham, stepson of C. S. Lewis.

Talking beasts, heroic deeds and epic battles between good and evil await you in C. S. Lewis’s classic fantasy series, which has been enchanting readers for over sixty years.

This edition presents the seven books-The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, and The Last Battle-unabridged and arranged in C.S. Lewis’s preferred order, featuring full-colour artwork by the original illustrator, Pauline Baynes.

The Ice Palace

Robert Swindells

Chapter book

When Ivan’s little brother is stolen away by the terrifying Starjik, Ivan sets out into a cold, inhospitable world to bring him back. Ivan’s chances in this frozen world seem slim, and Starjik has a wild, cruel magic on his side. And yet as his adventure continues, it becomes clear that Ivan may have a friend – and a little magic – on his side too. When I was younger I read this book endlessly. It’s one of those stories you experience with your heart in your mouth, right through to the very end.

The Hunting of the Snark

Chris Riddell & Lewis Carroll

Poetry

Could there be any greater adventure than setting sail across unmapped seas, guided by an unreliable Bellman, to a mysterious island where the Snarks live? This story has everything you could possibly want: humour, heart, tragedy, a man who’s forgotten his own name and a beaver. The magical element really comes in the Snarks themselves. Imagine: a beast that can cause you to softly and suddenly vanish away… If your Snark be a Boojum, that is.

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