Gillian Cross
Dogger by Shirley Hughes
A perfect picture book, exciting, funny and moving, with real tension – and a little mystery for the reader to solve.
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
This is full of memorable images; the house with a hundred rooms; the garden that’s been shut up for ten years; the mysterious crying in the night. But what really makes it special is its sallow, bad-tempered herione, Mary Lennox.
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Impossible to forget David’s brush with death at the top of the ruined stairs or his flight through the heather with Alan Breck Stewart – one of my favourite characters in fiction.
A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley
The best time-slip book I’ve ever read. I love its dreamy atmosphere, the way it plays around with history and the realistic bustle of the kitchen where the heroine finds herself. It makes time travel seem almost possible . . .
Tulki by Peter Dickinson
Peter Dickinson is an extraordinary writer and I think this is his best book. It has a feistry, unusual heroine and it’s sent in the days when Tibet was a mysterious, closed country and travel was a perilous adventure.
