Some to start you off...

A while ago I wrote a post about how important books are, especially when you're a kid. That's when it starts, that's when the seeds of a love affair with words and stories are planted. I mentioned the Guardian's booklist, and that I could easily think of a whole list of books they'd missed. Well here's that list, with my commentary. Most of these books are ones I can remember reading when I was younger, some I seemed to have missed, and caught up on as an adult. How many have you read?

• Black Beauty - Anna Sewell. This was from my horsey period, a lot of little girls go through it. BB and I survived it, I'd still recommend this, it's a beautiful book, and unusually is told from the horse's point of view.
• Peter Pan - J.M Barrie. I have been enchanted by this book for years, studying it at uni only strengthened my affections for it. It's a deceptively sweet tale, re-reading it as an adult revealed the darker side to Barrie's Neverland and the boy who wouldn't grow up.
• The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery. A classic. Short, sweet and lovely. It has some important things to say, and everyone should read it.
• Carrie' War - Nina Bawden. I know some people don't like this book, I didn't at first. But then I realised how interesting it is. An odd omission from the Guardian's list, along with Tom's Midnight Garden, it's a look at what being a child far from home is like, and there's magic in it too!
• Winnie-The-Pooh - A.A Milne. How they missed this I'll never know. Everybody knows the endearing tales of Pooh and his friends, Christopher Robin, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, Kanga, Rabbit, and Roo in the Hundred Acre Wood.
• Mary Poppins- P.L Travers. Much better than the film with Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke, much more going on too. There's a slightly dark core to Travers book, it's more sophisticated and enjoyable than Disney's pared down musical leads you to believe (but I have fond memories of the film too).
• Boy - Roald Dahl. I love Dahl, I love his weird stories, his courageous children and his adult short stories are dark and twisted too. Boy is the story of Dahl's own childhood, and it's a great way to see where he got some of the ideas for his children's books.
• Nation- Terry Pratchett. Sir Terry is amazing, this is his most recent children's book, I recommend it to everyone.
• Junk - Melvin Burgess. A contentious book. More for teenagers than children, it's been complained about, banned from school libraries, and as with any book treated like that, I wonder how many of it's critics have actually read it. Yes it's about heroin addiction, but it doesn't make it sound remotely appealing. Burgess doesn't shy away from serious subjects, and I agree that his books should be top of any young reader's list.
• Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe. I read this a long time ago, I think I was 7 or 8. It's stayed with me.
• The Water Babies - Charles Kingsley. This is my mum's favourite ever book. I have a gorgeous illustrated edition that never leaves the house. Full of weird and wonderful characters with names like Mrs Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By, it's an enchanting fairy tale of life underwater for a chimney sweep.
• The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman. Another recent book, from another writer I adore reading. I highly recommend it.
• A Gathering Light - Jennifer Donnelly. Based on true events, another book for slightly older readers.
• Children of the New Forest - Captain Marryat. As far as I'm concerned, the best book written about the English Civil War, for children, ever.
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll. It's a bit everywhere now I suppose, but the book's much richer and weirder than most.
• Tales of Redwall - Brian Jacques. I don't know if anyone else has ever read these, but I think they're fantastic. Chronicling life in an abbey populated by mice, hedgehogs, moles, badgers, and other woodland folk, Jacques' books have a little bit of everything going on. Hunt them out!
• A good selection of myths and legends. These should be on every bookcase. From the Greeks, to the Egyptians, to the Norse gods, the Legend of King Arthur and beyond. These stories form the backbone of much of the world's literature, they provide depth and understanding of human nature down the ages.
• A good collection of fairy tales. As with myths and legends, good folktales are the basis for almost all stories that came after. The Grimm's are quite gory, and Perrault cleaned them up. Get a good anthology or just pick up a couple of collections.
• The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame. Another true classic, sadly only really known nowadays it feels, for the rambunctious Toad. But there's a lot more there.
• Howl's Moving Castle - Diane Wynne Jones. Turned into a wonderful film by Japan's Studio Ghibli, Howl is a wizard who lives in a magical house, and Sophie is the girl who ends up there, trapped under a horrid curse. Wynne Jones' books are full of magic and mischief.
• Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lundgren. I have to say, this isn't one I read as a child. It's an odd little story, but quite fun.
• Alex Cold Trilogy - Isabel Allende. Magical realism for young people, these could be called. Alex and his journalist grandmother embark on three amazing adventures to parts of the world rarely troubled by outsiders, great for anyone who wants to explore their adventurous side from the comfort of their own home.

So, I know it's a long list, and it's probably not a complete list. Give me a while, I'll raid the shelves and have more to add. What were your favourite books as a child? How many have you re-read since then?

Sort of sequels

A few years ago Great Ormond Street Hospital (to whom J.M. Barrie gifted the rights to Peter Pan) commissioned children's author Geraldine McCaughrean to write the official sequel, Peter Pan in Scarlet. There have been several unofficial sequels, including Wendy by Karen Wallace, but most haven't been available in the UK due to copyright laws. I have a copy (hardback, I really wanted to read it) but I don't think McCaughrean's measures upto Barrie's original (properly called Peter and Wendy) which I have as both the novel and the playscript he wrote first. Barrie's writing is lyrical and at times, haunting. Lines such as "to die would be an awfully big adventure" are actually quite scary when you think about it, he draws on older forms "rosy fingered dawn" is a line from The Iliad. McCaughrean is a good writer, but too much time and water has flowed since Barrie wrote his enduring story of the boy who never wanted to grow up. One its own, Peter Pan in Scarlet is a good book, I just wish it wasn't picking up from another writer's book, that rarely works out well.
Another writer picking up the threads of an older novel is William Horwood, who has written a series of books following on from Kenneth Grahame's much loved Wind in the Willows. So far there's The Willows in Winter, The Willows and Beyond and Toad Triumphant. I've only read the first one of those, and that was some time ago. I love Grahame's lovely little book, re-reading it as an adult has meant I've picked up on several things I missed as a child reader. The chapter "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" for example, seems to belong to another narrative altogether, but is beautiful and moving.
Frank Beddor's The Looking Glass Wars and Seeing Redd reimagine Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, as an alternative world, where Alice is the daughter of the White King and Queen, fighting a war against her aunt, the Red Queen. Alice is sent through the Looking Glass to Victorian England, where she is taken in by the Liddells, and raised as their odd, adoptive daughter, who tells the story of her real home to the kindly Rev Dodgson (aka Carroll). Not a sequel as such, but part of a growing trend of 're-imaginings'.
Also in that category are Gregory Maguire's Wicked books, Wicked, Son of a Witch and A Lion Among Men. These re-imagine Frank L. Baum's Oz books from the perspective of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and then her descendents and other people whose lives intersected with hers.
This seems to be part of a wider tradition of re-telling, something that the Brothers Grimm were part of when they travelled round Europe collecting folklore and fairy tales. Angela Carter retold some of those tales in the 20th Century, retellings of retellings if you like.
There are many other unofficial sequels, but it seems quite prevalent in children's literature especially, which strikes me as something of a shame, it detracts a little from the glory of the orginals. It's up to time really, to see if these last as long as those stories they're based on.