Books in The New York Review Children's Collection series

Sheila Burnford, the author of The Incredible Journey, offers the spellbinding tale of a small dog caught up in the Second World War, and of the extraordinary life-transforming attachments he forms with the people he encounters in the course of a perilous passage from occupied France to besieged England.Nameless, Burnford’s hero first turns up as a performing dog, a poodle mix earning his keep as part of a gypsy caravan that is desperately fleeing the Nazi advance. Taken on ship by the Royal Navy, he is given the name of Ria and serves as the scruffy mascot to a boatload of sailors. Marooned in England in the midst of the Blitz, Ria rescues an old woman from the rubble of her bombed house, and finds himself unexpectedly transformed into Bel, the coiffed and pampered companion of her old age.Bel Ria is an exciting story about a compellingly real, completely believable dog. Readers of all sorts and ages will find in Bel Ria a companion to take to heart.

The famous Arden family treasure has been missing for generations, and the last members of the Arden line, Edred, Elfrida, and their Aunt Edith, have nothing to their names but the crumbling castle they live in. Just before his tenth birthday, Edred inherits the title of Lord Arden; he also learns that the missing fortune will be his if—and only if—he can find it before the turns ten. With no time to lose, Edred and Elfrida secure the help of a magical talking creature, the temperamental Mouldiwarp, who leads them on a treasure hunt through the ages. Together, brother and sister visit some of the most thrilling periods of history and test their wits against real witches, highwaymen, and renegades. They find plenty of adventure, but will they find the treasure before Edred’s birthday?

Nine-year-old Karl Anders Nilsson is the unwelcome foster child of an uncaring couple. Lonely and neglected, he yearns for simple things, things that many children already have: a warm and loving home of his own, someone to share his sorrows and joys with, and most important, his real father. Then, on October 15, Karl simply disappears. Where has he gone? (Police are searching for him!) But Karl is far away from chilly Stockholm, in Farawayland, where he has found his father, who is none other than the king of that land. And now Karl faces a truly dangerous mission. Prophecies have foretold his coming for thousands of years. He, his new best friend Pompoo, and Miramis, his wonderful flying horse with a golden mane, must travel together into the darkness of Outer Land to do battle with Sir Kato, the cruel abductor of the children of Farawayland. Only a child of the royal blood can stop him...

“She saw: first, a square opening, about eight inches wide, in the lowest step…finally, she saw that there was a walnut shell, or half one, outside the nearest door…. She went to look at the shell—but looked with the greatest astonishment. There was a baby in it.” So ten-year-old Maria, the orphaned mistress of Malplaquet, discovers the secret of her deteriorating estate: On a deserted island at its far corner, in the temple long ago nicknamed Mistress Masham’s Repose, lives an entire community of people—“the People,” as they call themselves—all only inches tall. With the help of her only friend—the absurdly erudite Professor—Maria soon learns that this settlement is no less than the kingdom of Lilliput (first seen in Gulliver’s Travels) in exile. Safely hidden for centuries, the Lilliputians are at first endangered by Maria’s well-meaning but clumsy attempts to make their lives easier, but their situation grows truly ominous when they are discovered by Maria’s greedy guardians, who look at the People and see only a bundle of money.

WHAT IS JUNKET?Junket is a delicious custard and a lovely dessert.But why is the old man with a red beard and red slippers eating such an enormous bowl of junket, and what could he possibly be thinking about while he feasts?That’s a good question! And one that the old man poses to the crowds and crowds of people that gather to watch him. In fact, almost everyone in the whole world wants to know the answer to this riddle.And only one little boy has the answer.This ingenious book of inspired nonsense was the very first from Dorothy Kunhardt, whose Pat the Bunny has delighted generations of young children.

New Year’s has passed. Twelfth Night is almost here. Krabat, a fourteen-year-old beggar boy dressed up as one of the Three Kings, is traveling from village to village singing carols. One night he has a strange dream in which he is summoned by a faraway voice to go to a mysterious mill—and when he wakes he is irresistibly drawn there. At the mill he finds eleven other boys, all of them, like him, the apprentices of its Master, a powerful sorcerer, as Krabat soon discovers. During the week the boys work ceaselessly grinding grain, but on Friday nights the Master initiates them into the mysteries of the ancient Art of Arts. One day, however, the sound of church bells and of a passing girl singing an Easter hymn penetrates the boys’ prison: At last a plan is set in motion that will win them their freedom and put an end to the Master’s dark designs. Krabat & the Sorcerer’s Mill was one of Cornelia Funke’s most beloved books as a child, and it is easy to see why. It is a wondrous story of magic, black and white; of courage and cunning; and of high adventure.

The Magic Pudding is a pie, except when it's something else, like a steak, or a jam donut, or an apple dumpling, or whatever its owner wants it to be. And it never runs out. No matter how many slices you cut, there's always something left over. It's magic.But the Magic Pudding is also alive. It walks and it talks and it's got a personality like no other. A meaner, sulkier, snider, snarlinger Pudding you've never met.So Bunyip Bluegum (the koala bear) finds out when he joins Barnacle Bill (the sailor) and Sam Sawnoff (the penguin bold) as members of the Noble Society of Pudding Owners, whose "members are required to wander along the roads, indulgin' in conversation, song and story, and eatin' at regular intervals from the Pudding." Wild and woolly, funny and outrageously fun, The Magic Pudding stands somewhere between Alice in Wonderland and The Stinky Cheese Man as one of the craziest books ever written for young readers.

Sheila Burnford, the author of The Incredible Journey, offers the spellbinding tale of a small dog caught up in the Second World War, and of the extraordinary life-transforming attachments he forms with the people he encounters in the course of a perilous passage from occupied France to besieged England.Nameless, Burnford’s hero first turns up as a performing dog, a poodle mix earning his keep as part of a gypsy caravan that is desperately fleeing the Nazi advance. Taken on ship by the Royal Navy, he is given the name of Ria and serves as the scruffy mascot to a boatload of sailors. Marooned in England in the midst of the Blitz, Ria rescues an old woman from the rubble of her bombed house, and finds himself unexpectedly transformed into Bel, the coiffed and pampered companion of her old age.Bel Ria is an exciting story about a compellingly real, completely believable dog. Readers of all sorts and ages will find in Bel Ria a companion to take to heart.

Bob, Son of Battle, is a sheepdog so canny and careful of his flock, so deeply devoted to his master, James Moore, and so admired for his poise and wisdom by the residents of a small village in the rugged mountains of England’s North Country, that young though he is, he is already known as Owd Bob. In a recent contest, Bob has proved himself a matchless sheepdog, and if he wins the trophy two more times, he’ll be seen as equal to the legendary sheepdogs of yore. But Bob has a real rival: Red Wull, with his docked tail and bristling yellow fur, a ferocious creature, just like his diminutive master, Adam McAdam, a lonely Scot, estranged not only from his English neighbors but from his son, David. McAdam just can’t stop belittling this strapping young man, all the more so since David began courting Moore’s beautiful daughter Maggie. But what McAdam really wants is for his beloved Wullie to wrest the prize from Bob once and for all. The story takes a darker turn when a troubling new threat to the local flocks emerges. A dog has gone rogue, sneaking out at night to feast on the flesh and blood of the sheep he is bound to protect. Again and again, new sheep fall prey to this relentless predator; again and again, he slips away undetected. This master hunter can only be among the boldest and sharpest of dogs . . . Bob, Son of Battle has long been a beloved classic of children’s literature both in America and in England. Here the celebrated author and translator Lydia Davis, who first read and loved this exciting story as a child, has rendered the challenging idioms of the original into fluent and graceful English of our day, making this tale of rival dogs and rival families and the shadowy terrain between Good and Bad accessible and appealing to readers of all ages.

Dino Buzzati's classic tale chronicles the terrible winter that sent the starving bears down into the valley in search of food, as well as their struggles with an army of wild boars, a wily professor who may or may not be a magician, snarling Marmoset the Cat, and, worse still, treachery within their own ranks. Over all this, the bears triumph with bravery, ingenuity, humility, and high spirits.

Black and Littlejack are bad men. Littlejack has a map that indicates the existence of a treasure on a far and lonely island. He needs a ship to get there. Black has a ship. So they team up and sail off on Black’s vessel, the Aeiu. “A weird uncanny name,” remarks Littlejack, “like a nightbird screaming.” Black explains that it’s all the vowels except for O. O he hates since his mother got wedged in a porthole. They couldn’t pull her in so they had to push her out.Black and Littlejack arrive at the port of the far and lonely island and demand the treasure. No one knows anything about it, so they have their henchmen ransack the place—to no avail. But Black has a better idea: he will take over the island and he will purge it of O.The vicissitudes visited on the islanders by Black and Littlejack, the harsh limits of a life sans O (where shoe is she and woe is we), and how finally with a little luck and lots of pluck the islanders shake off their tyrannical interlopers and discover the true treasure for themselves (Oh yes—and get back their O’s)—these are only some of the surprises that await readers of James Thurber’s timelessly zany fairy tale about two louts who try to lock up the language—and lose.

A Carnegie Medal Honor BookTwelve-year-old Smith is a denizen of the mean streets of eighteenth-century London, living hand to mouth by virtue of wit and pluck. One day he trails an old gentleman with a bulging pocket, deftly picks it, and as footsteps ring out from the alley by which he had planned to make his escape, finds himself in a tough spot. Taking refuge in a doorway, he sees two men emerge to murder the man who was his mark. They rifle the dead man’s pockets and finding them empty, depart in a rage. Smith, terrified, flees the scene of the crime. What has he stolen that is worth the life of a man?Smith is a gripping, engrossing, and utterly diverting tale of high adventure related by a writer whose scintillating style is matched only by the dazzle of his plotting. In the words of Lloyd Alexander, “Garfield is unmatched for sheer exciting storytelling. The reader simply can’t stop reading him.”