Ged (with a hard /g/) is born in a tiny village of goatherds on the mountainous island of Gont, where he shows early signs of tremendous magical power. Ged is proud, prickly, and ambitious. Instead of staying as an apprentice with the contempletive old wizard Ogion, the boy chooses to go to the wizarding school… Read more A Wizard of Earthsea (1967)
In a previous post I wrote about the Inventive Small-Town Animal-Loving Boy Whose Name Begins with H. The first of these books by nearly a decade was Homer Price (1942, by Robert McCloskey, better known for Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal). Homer Price is clearly the original for this genre — it… Read more Homer Price (1942)
Beyond the Pawpaw Trees is a strange little book, broadly fitting into the Nonsense category, but really somewhere between a fable and a children’s version of magical realism. Anna Lavinia, who has never been beyond the walled garden of her home, is sent by train to visit an aunt, during which journey she meets odd… Read more Beyond the Pawpaw Trees (1954)
I cannot do better than to quote from the front flap: How can anyone describe this book? It isn’t a parable, a fairy story or a poem, but rather a mixture of all three. It is beautiful and it is comic. It is philosophical and it is cheery. There are only a few reasons why… Read more The Thirteen Clocks (1950)
Now that I’ve got a good running start, I’m going to drop back to a schedule of three posts a week. Check in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for more books!
Edward Eager wrote seven books about magical doings, all of them modeled after E. Nesbit whom he greatly admired. But where Nesbit is serious or understatedly funny, Eager is straight-up comical. He was a playwright, and it shows in his quick pacing and sharp characterization. Who can resist writing like this? “Katharine was the middle… Read more Knight’s Castle (1956)
Most books feature ordinary children to whom unusual things happen, or perhaps a character who turns out to be extraordinary in a generic sort of way (they are the lost prince, or a witch, or have a gift of talking to animals or seeing ghosts). But these characters are usually not, in and of themselves,… Read more Books for Odd Children: A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
The title of this book can mislead, making one think of sweet old-fashioned books about ordinary girls enjoying ordinary girl activities. But Ballet Shoes is cut from an altogether different cloth. It concerns three very different orphan girls in London, adopted by an absent-minded paleontologist who disappears and leaves the family in poverty. First their… Read more Ballet Shoes (1936)
In the Land Between the Mountains, in the village of Slipper-on-the-Water, lives a diffident, unremarkable Minnipin named Muggles. She is caught between the conventional, order-loving majority, and the odd few who don’t fit in: Curley Green the artist who paints her front door scarlet; Gummy the poet who wears a yellow cloak and hat; and… Read more The Gammage Cup (1959)
Like Snyder’s The Egypt Game, The Changeling concerns two girls who form a friendship around a system of imaginings. Martha is from a socially prominent, emotionally unexpressive family; Ivy is from a large, poor, dysfuntional family prone to petty crime. Neither girl fits in her own world, so they spend their time in a shared… Read more The Changeling (1970)