Recommendations from our site
“E. Nesbit is brilliant at bringing magic alive and rooting it in something that you feel is real…The Psammead is not a conventional fairy. It is a sand fairy with eyes on long horns like snail’s eyes and can move them in and out like telescopes. It’s got ears like a bat and it is a grumpy hypochondriac. Like Mary Poppins, it’s susceptible to flattery. It’s such imaginative and highly individual characterization. She is absolutely marvellous on that! Similarly, with the phoenix, who made me laugh so much. He keeps on referring to himself as ‘My Golden Presence’, in the third person. He’s very vain. One of the reasons I chose The Five Children and It is for the brilliant characterisation. It still feels fresh and original today.” Read more...
Cressida Cowell, Children's Author
Our most recommended books
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Fourteen Wolves: A Rewilding Story
by Catherine Barr & Jenni Desmond (illustrator) -
Father Christmas Goes on Holiday
by Raymond Briggs -
Black Beauty
by Anna Sewell -
The Lord of the Rings
by J R R Tolkien -
Reckless: The Petrified Flesh
Cornelia Funke, translated by Oliver Latsch -
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë