anchored on:fantasy
series27 books1902
completed
similar byfantasy
Two separate modern continuations of E. Nesbit's Psammead stories were written decades apart by different authors: Helen Cresswell's The Return of the Psammead (1992) brings the wish-granting sand fairy back for a new set of children, while Kate Saunders's Five Children on the Western Front (2014) follows the now-grown Lamb and his siblings as the First World War arrives, in a more somber sequel to Nesbit's original trilogy. Neither book is by Nesbit herself, and the two have no direct connection to each other beyond both drawing on her creation. Later writers have kept returning to Nesbit's premise long after her own trilogy ended.
universe112 books1902
Start herePeter Pan · Start here
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Second star to the right, and straight on till morning — and there it is, the island that every child dreams once and then, growing up, contrives to forget. Neverland: mermaids in the lagoon, a ticking crocodile with a clock in its belly, a pirate nursing his severed hand, and above it all the boy who will not grow up, forever flying, forever heartless in the lovely careless way that only children are. It begins with J. M. Barrie — the 1904 stage play, the chapters of Kensington Gardens, and the novel Peter and Wendy that fixed Peter, Wendy, Tinker Bell, Hook and the Lost Boys in place. From that small window a wide world has flown. Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson supply the how-it-all-began in their Starcatchers books, chasing falling starstuff aboard a doomed ship to explain why one orphan came to fly and never age. A whole bright shelf tends Tinker Bell's Pixie Hollow — the Disney Fairies and Fairy Haven tales, Kiki Thorpe's Never Girls — while Heidi Schulz hands the wheel to Hook's own daughter, and stranger, dimmer corners carry the island into far darker weather. Many hands, one archipelago; no single map governs them all. What sets it apart is the sweetness with a blade in it — wonder shadowed always by the ache of leaving, of mothers who keep the window open and children who fly home too late. Newcomers should begin where it began, with Barrie's Peter and Wendy, then, for the origin, take the Starcatchers books in their own order. The rest of Neverland waits, as it always does, for whoever still remembers how to reach it.
series10 books1994
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Fairy Realm is a series of ten children's fantasy novels by Australian author Jennifer Rowe, writing under the pseudonyms Mary-Anne Dickinson and Emily Rodda. Rowe is also the author of the series Deltora Quest and Rowan of Rin. In the U.K, the series was published under the title Fairy Charm.
series7 books1954
completed
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Tales of Magic collects Edward Eager's seven loosely connected children's novels about ordinary kids who stumble into magic in everyday American settings, starting with Half Magic, in which four siblings find a coin that grants exactly half of any wish. Each book follows a different, sometimes overlapping set of children and a different magical object or rule, from Knight's Castle to the deliberately ambiguous Magic or Not? and its sequel The Well-Wishers. Eager wrote them as a direct homage to E. Nesbit, sometimes having his own child characters read her books.
series2 books1994
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Eva Ibbotson's The Secret of Platform 13 (1994) follows a rescue party of three magical misfits -- a giant, a wizard, and a young hag named Odge -- who cross from a hidden magical island to King's Cross Station's Platform 13 to recover an infant prince kidnapped as a baby and raised, unaware of his heritage, in the ordinary world. A 2019 sequel, Beyond Platform 13, was written by Sibéal Pounder after Ibbotson's death, continuing the story for new readers.
series3 books1993
similar byfantasylightheartedfaecontemporary
Susan Cooper's Boggart series begins with the 1993 novel The Boggart, nominated for a Young Reader's Choice Award, and continues across three further books including The Boggart and the Monster and A Box of Boggarts. Cooper, best known for The Dark Is Rising sequence, writes here in a lighter fantasy-adventure register.
series4 books1960
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Alan Garner's Alderley books begin with The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) and The Moon of Gomrath (1963), children's fantasies set around the real Cheshire hill of Alderley Edge and drawn from its local legends. Garner returned to the same setting and characters decades later in Boneland (2012), a far darker novel for adults in which the now-grown Colin, afflicted with amnesia covering his entire childhood, tries to piece together what really happened to him and his sister. The three books span most of Garner's writing life rather than forming one continuous trilogy.
series7 books1982
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Bruce Coville's Magic Shop books each send a different kid into Mr. Elives's strange antique shop, where an ordinary-looking item turns out to carry real magic and consequences. The Monster's Ring opens the series with a boy who buys a ring to scare a bully on Halloween, only to find he can genuinely transform into a monster. Later entries repeat the pattern with new objects and new children, tied together by the shop and its owner rather than a continuing plot.
series10 books1964
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Ian Fleming's Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964) follows the Pott family and their magical car -- able to fly and turn into a hovercraft -- as it helps them foil criminals across the English Channel; Fleming, best known for James Bond, wrote it while recovering from a heart attack and drew on his own love of vintage racing cars. Decades later, Frank Cottrell-Boyce wrote three further Chitty novels (2011-2013) continuing the car's adventures with a new family.
Lynne Reid Banksstandalone novel1985
similar byfantasylightheartedfaecontemporary
A rebellious fairy named Tiki, already in trouble for breaking the rule against wearing jeans, risks the further wrath of the Fairy Queen by trying to fulfill a human's special request for help.
series14 books2003
part of Spiderwick
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Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi's Spiderwick Chronicles follow the three Grace children after they move into the run-down Spiderwick Estate and discover a hidden field guide to the fantastical creatures living around them. Their new knowledge draws them into escalating conflicts with dangerous faeries, building to a confrontation with the shapeshifting ogre Mulgarath, who wants the guide's secrets to conquer both the human and faerie worlds.
series6 books2020
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series9 books2005
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The Sisters Grimm is a children's fantasy series written by Michael Buckley and illustrated by Peter Ferguson. The series is partially based on the works and lives of the Brothers Grimm, with the titular protagonists, Sabrina Grimm and Daphne Grimm, being their fictional descendants, and the supporting cast featuring many characters from the Grimms’ collection of fairytales.
series8 books1986
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The Magic Kingdom of Landover is a series of six fantasy novels by Terry Brooks following the adventures of a former trial lawyer named Ben Holiday, who purchases a magical kingdom.
series44 books1999
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The Secrets of Droon is a fantasy book series by Tony Abbott aimed at elementary school-age children. The first book, The Hidden Stairs and the Magic Carpet, was published on June 1, 1999. On October 1, 2010, the final book of the series, The Final Quest, was released, concluding its eleven-year run. The series was named by the American Booksellers Association among the top ten books for Harry Potter fans.
universe17 books2003
Start hereSpiderwick Chronicles · Start here
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Do not read this book. So warns the note bound into Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You — which is exactly why Jared Grace opens it, and why the hidden world opens onto him. Move into a crumbling family estate with your mother, your twin brother, and your fencing-champion sister, and you may find the walls already occupied: a testy house brownie, goblins with a taste for cats, and an ogre named Mulgarath who wants the Guide for himself. Holly Black writes and Tony DiTerlizzi draws this small, densely illustrated world across two linked cycles. The Spiderwick Chronicles runs five slim volumes — The Field Guide, The Seeing Stone, Lucinda's Secret, The Ironwood Tree, and The Wrath of Mulgarath — a single mounting emergency told at a breathless clip. Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles carries the danger south to swampy Florida across three more books, where new children meet giants, nixies, and a wyrm stirring underground. The companion Field Guide itself catalogues every sprite and troll in loving naturalist detail. The pleasure here is the specimen-collector's: faerie treated as a taxonomy to be sketched, labelled, and survived, cozy domestic scale shot through with real teeth. Begin with The Field Guide and read straight through in publication order — the five originals first, then the Beyond trilogy. Slender enough to finish in an afternoon, sharp enough to send you checking the cupboard afterward.
series12 books1977
completed
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Chrestomanci, sometimes branded The Worlds of Chrestomanci, is a heptalogy of children's fantasy books written by British author Diana Wynne Jones, published from 1977 to 2006. In the context of the parallel universe setting of the books, Chrestomanci refers to both the British government office that is responsible for supervising the use of magic and Chrestomanci Castle in southern England, which is both residence and headquarters.