More like Hot Stuff
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- Catwings
series7 books1988
completed
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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.
- Tales of Magic
series7 books1954
completed
similar byfantasyfriendshipcontemporaryour world+2 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.
- Emily Windsnap
series16 books2003
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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.
- The Enchanted Castle
E. Nesbitstandalone novel1907
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On a dull school holiday, siblings Jerry and Jimmy and their friend Kathleen stumble across a grand, hidden estate in the countryside, with a lake, marble statues, and a maze at its heart. Inside the maze they find what looks like a sleeping princess, who claims the castle is enchanted and shows them a ring that grants invisibility -- until it works, and the panicked 'princess' turns out to be Mabel, the housekeeper's niece, playing a game gone further than intended. The ring's magic turns out to be entirely real, answering the children's own careless, half-formed wishes. One of E. Nesbit's best-loved fantasies for children.
- Five Children Universe
series27 books1902
completed
similar byfantasy+3 more
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.
- The Halloween Tree
Ray Bradburystandalone novel1972
similar byfantasyfriendshipcontemporaryour worldcoming of age
Eight boys gather on Halloween night to trick-or-treat with their ninth friend, Pipkin, only Pipkin never shows, having vanished on some errand that may cost him his life. A strange, black-robed guide named Moundshroud appears to lead the boys after him, and the chase turns into a journey through the history of the holiday itself: ancient Egypt, druidic Britain, Rome, medieval Paris, and the Mexican Day of the Dead, each stop peeling back another layer of how humanity has faced death and the dark. Ray Bradbury's Halloween novel doubles as a compressed history of the holiday's origins.
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaimanstandalone novel2013
similar byfantasyfriendshipcontemporaryour worldcoming of age
A seven year old farm boy becomes friends with an eleven year old neighbor girl, who he discovers is ancient and powerful and intervenes when a nonhuman entity attempts to make a home in earthly reality.
- The Wish
Gail Carson Levinestandalone novel2000
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From copyright page: When granted her wish to be the most popular girl in school, Wilma, an eighth grader, forgets that she will graduate in three weeks and her popularity will vanish.
- Boggart
series3 books1993
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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.
- Magic Shop
series7 books1982
similar byfantasycontemporaryour worldcoming of age
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.
- The Barrel in the Basement
Barbara Brooks Wallacestandalone novel1985
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Pudding, the youngest of three Furkins, or elves, living in a barrel in the basement of a human named Noah, proves that a shy Furkin is capable of great deeds like the heroes of the past.
- My Secret Unicorn
series16 books2002
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My Secret Unicorn is a series of children's books written by Linda Chapman. The series was first published between 2002 and 2007. The books feature the adventures of Lauren and her unicorn, Twilight, and their friends. Chapman got the inspiration for the series while nannying for a pony-mad seven-year-old in 1994, and in 1998 started writing for Working Partners Ltd. Since then she has had over a hundred books published under various pseudonyms and under her own name.
- Young Wizards
series24 books1983
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Diane Duane's Young Wizards series begins with thirteen-year-old Nita, bullied and friendless, who borrows a library book on wizardry and discovers it's the real thing: an apprenticeship into a covert order that fights entropy, alongside a classmate named Kit. Across fifteen books published between 1983 and 2019, the two age forward in something close to real time as their missions escalate from New York streets to alien worlds and beyond. The series centers on the wizard's Oath and the idea that magic is a responsibility taken on to slow the universe's decay, not a power to be enjoyed for its own sake.
- Pip Bartlett's Guides
series3 books2015
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- Doctor Dolittle
series27 books1920
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Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle books follow a Victorian-era English physician who gives up treating people to practice medicine among animals, whose languages he learns to speak, traveling the world with an ever-growing menagerie of companions. Lofting wrote twelve novels between 1920 and 1936, beginning with The Story of Doctor Dolittle, with two further story collections published after his 1947 death. Kathryn Knight and Nick Price, credited alongside Lofting in modern editions, are illustrators/editors of reissues rather than co-authors of new installments.
