More like Ghost Squad
anchored on:contemporarymiddle gradeghost stories
but
- Bod Owens
series3 books2007
similar bycoming of ageour worldcontemporarymiddle gradefound familyfantasy+1 more
The Graveyard Book follows Nobody "Bod" Owens, a toddler who escapes the murder of his family and is raised among the ghosts of an old English graveyard, absorbing their otherworldly customs while a threat from his past waits beyond the gates. Neil Gaiman's 2008 novel won both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and illustrator P. Craig Russell later adapted it into a two-volume graphic novel. Bod's story spans the original novel and that graphic-novel retelling rather than continuing in a prose sequel.
- James and the Giant Peach
Roald Dahlstandalone novel1961
similar bycoming of ageour worldcontemporaryadventurousfound familyfantasy
James and the Giant Peach is a children's novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl. The first edition, published by Alfred Knopf, featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. There have been re-illustrated versions of it over the years, drawn by Michael Simeon, Emma Chichester Clark, Lane Smith and Quentin Blake. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1996 which was directed by Henry Selick, and a musical in 2010.
- Emily Windsnap
series16 books2003
similar bycontemporaryadventurousfantasy+4 more
Emily Windsnap is a series of children's fantasy novels written by British author Liz Kessler, inaugurated by The Tail of Emily Windsnap in 2003 and continuing as of 2025. It is illustrated primarily by Sarah Gibb and published by Orion Children's Books in Britain, and Candlewick Press in America. The series originated as a poem that Kessler was writing about a "little girl who lived on a boat but had a big secret"; an editor recommended that Kessler turn the poem into a book.
- Whispering to Witches
Anna Dalestandalone novel2004
similar byour worldcontemporaryadventurouslightheartedmiddle gradewitchesfantasy+1 more
Whispering to Witches is British writer Anna Dale's first novel, published in 2004 by Bloomsbury Publishing. It is a magical mystery adventure intended for children age 8–12. It was publisher Bloomsbury's main title for Autumn 2004 and was scheduled for distribution in the UK, the United States, Germany, and other countries.
- The Sisters Grimm
series9 books2005
similar byour worldcontemporaryadventurousmiddle gradefantasy+1 more
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.
- T*Witches
series10 books2001
similar bycoming of ageour worldcontemporarywitchesmiddle gradefantasy+1 more
T*Witches is an American children's fantasy novel series by H. B. Gilmour and Randi Reisfeld which were published between 2001 and 2004 by Scholastic Press, a subsidiary of Scholastic Corporation.
- ParaNorman
Elizabeth Cody Kimmelstandalone novel2012
similar bycoming of ageghost storiescontemporaryadventurousmiddle gradewitchesfantasyparanormal
In a quaint New England town with a history of witches and pilgrims, misunderstood eleven-year-old Norman Babcock can see and talk to ghosts. No one believes him, of course-everyone just thinks he's weird (including his parents). But when a folktale of a witch who cursed her accusers turns out to be true, it's up to Norman to save the town from pilgrim zombies! He'll also have to take on a very angry witch, an annoying sidekick, his boy-crazy teenage sister, and dozens of moronic grown-ups who get in his way. This young ghoul whisperer finds his paranormal talents pushed to their otherworldly limits in this hilarious and spooky adventure!
- Samuel Johnson
series3 books2009
similar byour worldcontemporaryadventurousmiddle gradefantasy+2 more
John Connolly's Samuel Johnson trilogy follows an ordinary boy and his dachshund, Boswell, who accidentally open a portal to Hell in his English hometown and end up as the unlikely last line of defense against the demons who pour through, beginning with The Gates. The comic horror trilogy continues through Hell's Bells and The Creeps.
- The Unseen World of Poppy Malone
series3 books2011
similar byour worldcontemporarymiddle gradefantasy+5 more
- Kairos
series11 books1962
completed
similar by+5 more
The Time Quintet is a science fantasy series of five young adult novels written by American author Madeleine L'Engle and made up of A Wrinkle in Time (1962), A Wind in the Door (1973), A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), Many Waters (1986), and An Acceptable Time (1989).
- Lewis Barnavelt
series12 books1973
similar bycontemporarymiddle gradefantasy+3 more
Lewis Barnavelt is a lonely orphan who moves in with his uncle Jonathan, an amateur wizard, in a rambling old house that turns out to hide a doomsday clock built into its walls by a previous, malevolent owner. John Bellairs introduced the character in The House with a Clock in Its Walls (1973), illustrated by Edward Gorey, and after Bellairs's death Brad Strickland continued the series from his notes and outlines for most of its later volumes. It blends gothic horror atmosphere with a gentler, more whimsical strain of children's fantasy.
- Life After Theft
series2 books2013
similar byghost storiesour worldcontemporarylightheartedfantasyparanormal+1 more
- Tales of Magic
series7 books1954
completed
similar byour worldcontemporaryfantasy+4 more
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.
- Anna Korlov
series2 books2011
similar byghost storiescontemporary+3 more
Kendare Blake's YA horror duology follows Cas Lowood, who has spent three years continuing his late father's work of hunting and dispatching violent ghosts, until he meets Anna, a ghost far more dangerous, and more sympathetic, than any he's faced. Anna Dressed in Blood and its sequel Girl of Nightmares follow Cas as his professional detachment gives way to a bond that complicates everything he thought he knew about his calling.
- His Dark Materials Universe
universe13 books1995
Start hereHis Dark Materials · Start here
similar bycoming of ageadventurousfantasy+1 more
In a world like ours and unlike it, every human soul walks outside the body in the shape of an animal — a daemon, who speaks, who cannot be lied to, and who settles into one fixed form only when childhood ends. This is the country of His Dark Materials: a company of parallel worlds across which an invisible dust of consciousness drifts down upon the waking mind; where a Church that calls itself the Magisterium would sooner sever a child's soul than let that Dust be understood; and where a golden instrument, the alethiometer, answers true questions for anyone with the patience to read it. Philip Pullman's design stands in two trilogies and a scatter of shorter tales. His Dark Materials — Northern Lights (published in America as The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass — carries Lyra Belacqua from the rooftops of a shadow Oxford across the borders between worlds. The Book of Dust returns to that same territory: La Belle Sauvage looks back to Lyra as an infant carried through a great flood, while The Secret Commonwealth follows her grown and less certain into adulthood, with a concluding volume closing the arc. Around them sit slim companion books — Lyra's Oxford, Once Upon a Time in the North, Serpentine — and Nicholas Wright's stage adaptation, made with Pullman's blessing. The register is grave and luminous at once, its title lifted from Milton and its quarrel drawn from Blake: a story that takes the side of curiosity, love, and the physical world against any authority that would forbid them. It reads as adventure — armoured bears, aeronauts, knife-cut windows between skies — yet reasons like philosophy. Begin with Northern Lights / The Golden Compass and read the first trilogy through before turning to The Book of Dust, which deepens everything the first has already made you feel.
- The Mysterious Benedict Society milieu
series4 books2007
similar bycoming of ageour worldcontemporaryadventurousmiddle grade+1 more
The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict is Trenton Lee Stewart's prequel to his Mysterious Benedict Society books, tracing the childhood of Mr. Benedict, the eccentric mentor of the main series' four child protagonists, before he became the man who recruits them to stop his twin brother Ledroptha Curtain from conquering the world. It was published in 2012, several years after the original trilogy began and a year after a 2011 companion volume. It can be read independently of the main quartet, though it draws its stakes from what Benedict becomes in those books.
- Catwings
series7 books1988
completed
similar bycoming of ageour worldcontemporarylightheartedfantasy
Catwings is a series of four American children's picture books written by Ursula K. Le Guin, illustrated by S. D. Schindler, and originally published by Scholastic from 1988 to 1999. It follows the adventures of kittens who were born with wings. Catwings is also the title of the first book in the series. The series is in print from Scholastic as of August 2015.
- The Indian in the Cupboard
series5 books1980
completed
similar bycoming of ageour worldcontemporaryadventurousmiddle gradefantasy
Lynne Reid Banks' Indian in the Cupboard series begins with the 1980 children's novel in which a boy discovers that an old cupboard can bring his plastic toy figures to life. The low-fantasy series, which inspired a 1995 film adaptation, continues across Return of the Indian, The Secret of the Indian, The Mystery of the Cupboard, and The Key to the Indian.
- Lost in Cyberspace
series2 books1995
completed
similar bycoming of agecontemporarylightheartedmiddle grade+2 more
