14 Forgotten Books from my Childhood

I see lots of books talked about online - but they're mainly classics, or by new or famous authors. From an age before the internet (well, social networking), most of the books I used to read never get publicised any more. And nobody ever recommends children's books anyway.

So here's a few that I remember enjoying - with no Harry Potter, Roald Dahl, Lemony Snicket, Narnia, Anne Fine, Artemis Fowl...

Revenge of the Killer Vegetables -Damon Burnard
I used to say this was one of my favourite books. One of the reasons was probably it's a comic! I don't think I realised that books could be this cool before - the title probably tells you the whole plot! And it's very funny, too. (Captain Underpants is another - sillier - comicky book I remember!)

Seriously - a talking potato!

Beaver Towers - Nigel Hinton
A bedtime story from when I was young - simple, Narnia-esque, about talking animals and magic and old places. And I must have read it lots of times, a rare event now.

Bobby Brewster series - H.E. Todd / Jeremy James books - David Henry Wilson
Two completely unrelated series I've lumped together, as I was about the same age reading both. The first, an old series of short stories from the 60s about a boy who ended up having magical adventures - well, slightly bargain basement adventures, with everyday items like a snowman or a potato coming to life. And the second, much more recent, about the highly comical adventures of an inquisitive four year old boy - I remember one of my teachers being a fan of them too.

Hiding Out - Elizabeth Laird
This used to scare me when I was little. It's about a boy on holiday in France, who then gets left behind and has to fend for himself. It's not creepy as such, just very realistic - although foraging for food and living in a cage isn't really comparable to getting lost in Marks and Spencer.

The Pokemon series - various
It seems a bit odd today. You had the videos games - the important, amazing thing - but also the Pokemon cards, the comics, the toys, the anime series... and you still got excited about the novelisations. Must have been a bit like what Doctor Who was - with Tracey Jump being Terrance Dicks's analogue. Even more excitingly - a few of them were original! I've got about twenty of them.

I don't think I got the Zelda books - but I do have Sonic !

Choose-your-own-adventure books 
Loved these. For those unfamiliar, you start at page 1, and then whichever pages you choose to read next determines the story. Nothing fancy with dice or paper - my favourites were some rare Super Mario books, which had a load of puzzles and mazes that you had to get right in order to get the best ending. I even made my own once in the back of a notebook on holiday.

Murderous Maths - Kjartan Poskitt
Horrible Histories, Horrible Science, The Knowledge, and all that lot... But my favourite series was Murderous Maths. Perhaps because - shock! - I actually quite liked the subject. And this series was great - actually dealing with pretty complex concepts (A-level standard, even) in amongst the jokes. There's a nifty website too.

Deadly, Wicked etc - Paul Jennings and Morris Gleitzmann
I'm not sure how popular these two authors were - maybe it's a 90s thing, or an Australian thing - but they're highly recommended. I opted more for the oddity and daringness of Jenning's short stories, rather than Gleitzmann's real-life surrealism (though I did like Toad Rage). When they collaborated (on a few series), the results were very insane - giant worms and murderous sheep, that kinda thing.

The Wish List - Eoin Colfer
Everyone knows about Artemis Fowl (hopefully), and there's some great other Eoin Colfer books (Airman, The Supernaturalist, Half Moon Investigations, etc), but this one's a favourite of mine, and very underrated. It's witty and down to earth, about a girl who comes back as an angel in order to help an old man complete his 'wish list' - and sort out her own problems.
 
The Fire Within - Chris D'Lacey
I loved the first book - a brilliantly told story about an introduction into the ancient, hidden world of dragons. And also a story-within-a-story about squirrels. More sequels followed (like, five or six of them now) but by the time I got round to reading them I'd forgotten what happened in the first one. Oops.

Muddle Earth - Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
Incredibly funny. Even for people who don't know Lord of the Rings - it's a spoof of fantasy novels, basically, from the writers of the acclaimed, extraordinary epic The Edge Chronicles (definitely worth reading, those!). They've tried to adapt it a few times, but it doesn't quite work as well as on the page. There was eventually a sequel, but I haven't read it yet.

Magyk, et al by Angie Sage
Okay, I was a bit old with this one (though apparently - 2005, so not that old), but it's still bewitching - literally, a book about an apprentice wizard in a very believable fantasy world. It's got a wide range of characters - so it's sometimes hard to keep track of them between books, but it has warmth and humour in spades. And there's a blog here.

TimeRiders - Alex Scarrow
 Okay, this is a cheat, as I was about 18 when it came out. But it's still an underrated new YA series. The first book in the series is still my favourite - time travel, Nazis, robots, nuclear war... it's a real action packed blockbuster! Website here.


There's probably lots more - children's fantasy series like The Divide (a boy discovering a mixed up fantasy world), Troll Fell (Vikings discovering trolls!), Otto and the Flying Twins (another fantasy wizarding world), and countless one-offs...