 | The Picts and the Martyrs by Arthur Ransome
Buy new: £9.74 / Used from: £6.43 Children adapt to a strange holiday. Quieter than the other Ransomes, with perhaps the most charming protagonists..
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 | Storm Ahead (Romney Marsh) by Monica Edwards
Buy used from: £39.95 Rarely read now, but a picture of middle class girlhood as it should have been.
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 | Goldengrove Unleaving by Jill Paton Walsh
Buy used from: £0.01 With its sequel - Unleaving - the greatest unread children's classic of the last fifty years
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 | Minnow on the Say by Philippa Pearce OBE
Buy new: £5.39 / Used from: £6.89 Working class boy puzzles out middle class life - and has an adventure.
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 | Mistress Masham's Repose by T. H. White
Buy new: £6.29 / Used from: £0.01 A classic in the little-girl-against-wicked-guardian genre - plus Lilliputians!
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 | Brendon Chase by B.B.
Buy new: £4.99 / Used from: £2.85 You have to be in the right (uncritical) mood for this Boy's Own Paper yarn; but I've always loved it.
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 | The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
Buy new: £4.89 / Used from: £0.01 Terry Pratchett is our greatest living novelist. This and its sequel - A Hat Full of Sky - are brilliant. Girl protagonist, too.
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 | How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Buy new: £4.73 / Used from: £0.01 Everything it's cracked up to be - excellent. Girl protagonist again.
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 | Seventeenth Summer (Point - Original Fiction) by K.M. Peyton
Buy used from: £0.01 Originally 'Pennington's Seventeenth Summer' - working class teenager who'd get an ASBO these days!
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 | Wild Wood by Jan Needle
Buy used from: £8.25 The Wind In The Willows from the Weasel's point of view - hard to find but brilliant.
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 | Thunder and Lightnings by Jan Mark
Buy used from: £0.01 Growing up and adjusting to loss and change - but not heavy going.
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 | The Hobbit (Essential Modern Classics) by J.R.R. Tolkien
Buy new: £4.49 / Used from: £0.01 Yeah, I know it's a cliche, but this is a book to read to kids - if you can do the voices.
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 | The Various by Steve Augarde
Buy new: £5.24 / Used from: £0.01 New(ish) and not well known, but another girl protagonist coping with an odd family set-up - and punk fairies!
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 | The Peppermint Pig (Puffin Books) by Nina Bawden
Buy new: £4.47 / Used from: £0.01 Set at the turn of the 19th/20th century, another girl protagonist struggling with poverty.
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 | Just William by Richmal Crompton
Buy used from: £0.01 It doesn't matter which of the early 'Williams' you read - they're all perfct of their kind.
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 | The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
Buy new: £3.49 / Used from: £0.01 A real desert island book for me.- another heroine.
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 | Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff
Buy used from: £2.66 Almost any Sutcliff will do - but this is her best, and the best retelling of the Arthurian legend. Hard to find.
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 | The Golden Age (Wordsworth Children's Classics) by Kenneth Grahame
Buy used from: £0.01 With it's sequel, - Dream Days - the best evocation of a late Victorian childhood. Not really written for children - though Theodore Roosevelt loved it.
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 | Kidnapped (Wordsworth Children's Classics) by Robert Louis Stevenson
Buy new: £1.99 / Used from: £0.01 Better than 'Treasure Island' - could this man write!
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 | Kim (Penguin Popular Classics) by Rudyard Kipling
Buy new: £2.00 / Used from: £0.01 The best to last - if you've never read it - do so!
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