lirazel | (no subject)

I have an interview in an hour! I am nervous! So I'm distracting myself here on DW!

I just read Monica Furlong's Wise Child for the first time and absolutely loved it. I'll definitely be reading Juniper as soon as I can get my hands on it and will perhaps write a post about them after that. (I seem to remember someone telling me that Colman wasn't very good? I may skip that one.)

Anyway, it stirred my ever-renewing love for really wonderful middle grade fiction. I'm planning on rereading The Gone-Away Lake books soon and also Eva Ibbotson's Journey to the River Sea.

But do y'all have some more MG books to rec me? Especially stuff that was written after the mid-90s (which was when I stopped reading MG books for the most part) but also some classics that are more obscure that you think I may not have read. A lot of my favorites are saved either here or here if you want to see what I've read/what I'm into. I am a big Frances Hardinge fan, too, if that gives you an idea of my taste, but she's really the only currently-writing MG author that I have discovered.

I am looking for either fantasy/scifi or historical fiction books--I just don't read contemporary-set fiction for any age group.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If you haven't already read it, The Mysterious Benedict Society would qualify as scifi/fantasy since one of the young protagonists has paranormal abilities.

Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher was written in 1916 so while it might have been "contemporary set fiction" back in the day, it surely reads like historical fiction now!

I remember loving the Beany Malone books when I was a kid. Again, they were written so long ago that they must qualify as historical fiction now.

I love Rumer Godden's books about dolls: The Doll's House, Holly and Ivy are two standouts. The Dragon of Og. The Diddakoi. (I love her adult books, too.)

Lady Daisy by Dick King Smith is a charming book about a boy who finds a talking doll. (I wrote fanfic for it for an exchange.)

I loved Edward Eager's Books of Magic series: Knight's Castle, Magic by the Lake, etc.

Everything by Eleanor Estes. My favorite is The Hundred Dresses.

Everything by Elizabeth Enright, which it appears you've already read?

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.

Maida's Little Shop was another favorite.

Good luck with the interview!

I was raised on the Five Little Peppers, actually! And yes to Elizabeth Enright and Eleanor Estes!

But the rest I haven't read (and didn't even know that Rumer Godden wrote books about dolls!) so I'm excited to check them out!

Thanks so much!

I think she wrote a couple of dozen books for children, including seven or eight about dolls, I believe. Most of her books are back in print, or at least they were a few years ago. Anyway, they're not nearly as hard to find as when I started collecting her back in the late eighties, early nineties.

Some of these books, The Melendy Family series, for example, I reread to write a Yuletide pinch hit, or a gift fic for one of the other book fandom exchanges. Some I haven't looked at in over 50 years.

They're comfort rereads for me now.