More like Pipe Down!
but
- Tales of Magic
series7 books1954
completed
similar bycontemporary+3 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.
- Danny Dunn
series15 books1956
completed
similar byadventureadventurous+2 more
Danny Dunn is the young protagonist of a long-running mid-century American juvenile science fiction series by Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams, starting in 1956. Each book sends Danny and his friends into an adventure built around a specific piece of speculative technology — anti-gravity paint, a homework machine, weather control — that goes predictably wrong or is misused by someone else. Aimed squarely at young readers, the fifteen-book run treats gadget-driven science fiction as a springboard for comic mishap and light moralizing rather than hard extrapolation.
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
series10 books1964
similar bycontemporary+3 more
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.
- Watership Down
series21 books1972
completed
similar bycontemporaryadventurous+2 more
Watership Down is Richard Adams's 1972 novel following a group of rabbits who flee the destruction of their warren and cross the English countryside of Hampshire in search of a new home, developing over the journey a full rabbit culture of language, proverbs, and mythology. Adams returned to the same world in 1996 with Tales from Watership Down, a collection of nineteen short stories mixing rabbit folklore with further adventures of characters from the novel.
- Pokémon
universe51 books1999
Start hereI Choose You · Start here
similar byadventurous+4 more
Somewhere past the edge of town, the tall grass rustles — and something with bright eyes and stranger powers is waiting to be met. This is the world of Pokémon: a bright, wide land where wondrous creatures share the fields, seas, and skies with the people who befriend them. A young Trainer packs a bag, clips a few Poké Balls to a belt, and sets out to see how many kinds there are, learn their moves, and grow up a little on the road. Catch, befriend, battle, repeat — and never stop wondering what's over the next hill. In print, that journey arrives as junior novels, chapter books, and official fiction that carry the animated series onto the page. Tracey West and a rotating bench of tie-in authors follow Trainer Ash and his loyal Pikachu region by region — from Kanto's first steps out toward the islands of Alola in Sun & Moon — alongside easy-reader adaptations and collector-minded companion volumes. Most entries stand alone, sized for readers just gaining their own confidence. The register is sunny and quick: rivalries settled in the arena, not to the death; friendship treated as the real superpower; every setback a lesson before the next badge. Newcomers should start at the beginning of the road — the earliest chapter books, or the first-region novelizations — then simply travel forward.
- Lumberjanes
series4 books2017
similar bylightheartedcontemporarymiddle grade+1 more
Lumberjanes is a comic book series created by Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, Gus Allen, and ND Stevenson and published via the Boom Box! imprint of Boom! Studios. The story follows a group of girls spending summer at a scout camp, and the strange creatures and supernatural phenomena they encounter there. Originally planned as an eight-part series, the comic was made an ongoing series following strong sales and critical acclaim. The comic series came to a close after 75 issues with a one-shot finale in December 2020, ending its six-year-run.
- Kairos
series11 books1962
completed
similar by+2 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).
- Emily Windsnap
series16 books2003
similar bycontemporaryadventurous+2 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.
- Cassie Kingston Mysteries
series4 books2009
similar byadventurelightheartedcontemporarymiddle gradeadventurous
- Benny
series2 books1998
similar bylightheartedcontemporary
Benny Shaw is the protagonist of two children's literature novels by Irish author Eoin Colfer. The first book in the series, Benny and Omar, sees Benny move from Ireland to Tunisia and befriend a local boy. The second book, Benny and Babe, deals with Benny's holiday in Ireland and a friendship with a local girl.
- Cairo Jim and/or Jocelyn Osgood
series18 books1991
similar byadventuremiddle grade+1 more
Cairo Jim is an archaeologist-poet who lives in Cairo's fictional Valley of the Hairdressers, adventuring around the world's ancient sites with his English-speaking, Shakespeare-quoting macaw Doris and a widely read camel named Brenda, usually opposed by his treasure-hunting rival Captain Neptune Flannelbottom Bone. Jocelyn Osgood, a pilot and flight attendant, joins him on many of the later expeditions. Geoffrey McSkimming's Australian series runs to about twenty volumes of pun-heavy, globe-trotting adventure for younger readers.
- Do-It-Yourself Magic
Ruth Chewstandalone novel1987
similar bylightheartedcontemporaryadventurous+1 more
Rachel and Scott buy a Build-Anything Kit that " ... builds what they want it to, adds little things they've forgotten, changes things that aren't even in the kit -- it even changes Scott and Rachel! It builds things they hadn't even thought of and, generally, leads them into trouble, fun, adventure, excitement and, once or twice, a real pickle!"--Cover, p. 2.
- Silverwing
series5 books1997
similar bymiddle gradeadventurous
Kenneth Oppel's Silverwing novels follow a colony of bats whose society is divided along old lines of species, faction, and belief, forcing young bats to navigate conflicts that adults have inherited rather than chosen. Across four books, the series treats bat colonies as full societies with their own history and politics, using that lens to explore tolerance and freedom of thought. It's popular enough to have been adapted into an animated television series.
- His Dark Materials
series8 books1995
part of His Dark Materials Universe
similar byadventurous+1 more
His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. The novels have won a number of awards, including the Carnegie Medal in 1995 for Northern Lights and the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year for The Amber Spyglass. In 2003, the trilogy was ranked third on the BBC's The Big Read poll.
- The Halloween Tree
Ray Bradburystandalone novel1972
similar byadventurecontemporarymiddle grade
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.
