“The Goose Girl,” Shannon Hale, Bloomsbury; 2003; 383 pp. Once upon a time, two German brothers published a collection of children’s stories inspired by popular European folk tales. The stories of the Brothers Grimm became fairytale classics, and many of them — Cinderella, Snow ...

“The House of Windjammer,” V.A. Richardson, Bloomsbury; 2003; 349 pp. No matter where you grow up, whether it’s in 21st-century Japan or in 17th-century Europe, some things never change. People everywhere, at every time, are at the mercy of larger forces — political upheavals, ...

“Ruby Holler,” Sharon Creech, Bloomsbury; 2002, 310 pp. How do you reform a pair of 13-year-old twins who spend every spare moment breaking, spilling, throwing or dropping things — and cursing loudly when they’re caught? If you’re Tiller and Sairy Morey, you start by ...

A Single Shard, by LINDA SUE PARK, Clarion Books; 2002; 160 pp. If recent children’s books are any indication, we might be led to believe that boy-wizards who fight evil and that children lucky enough to embark on wild adventures exist only in Britain ...

“Toad Heaven,” Morris Gleitzman, Puffin Books; 2002; 192 pp. Humans are always complaining about how unfair life is. Limpy is a cane toad, but he thinks it’s unfair, too. For starters, no one likes him (except his family). Female cane toads don’t think he’s ...

“Tell the Moon to Come Out,” Joan Lingard, Puffin Books; 2003; 208 pp. How many times have you seen this happen at school? The English teacher gives the class a topic to write on, and everyone comes up with something different. In fact, some ...

“Fox,” Matthew Sweeney, Bloomsbury; 2002; 176 pp. Every city has its ghosts. I don’t mean spirits of the dead, I mean real people who might as well be invisible because no one takes notice of them. Gerard finds his ghosts in the Irish city ...

“Big George and the Seventh Knight,” Eric Pringle, Bloomsbury; 2002; 200 pp. Hear ye, hear ye, it is the Year of our Lord 1305, and we are about to listen to a medieval tale with a difference. To be sure it has — as ...

“Follow Me Down,” Julie Hearn, Oxford University Publishing; July 2003; 224 pp. Strange things are happening in the basement of an old house in East London — and not for the first time. The floor has parted, forming a kind of channel, and faces ...

“Ned Mouse Breaks Away,” Tim Wynne-Jones, Groundwood Books; 2003; 192 pp. If you were caught playing with your spinach — or worse, using long, stringy bits of it to write “I hate what Mom makes me eat” — what would happen? You’d probably get ...

“Power and Stone,” Alice Leader, Puffin Books; May 2003; 249 pp. There’s so much more to history than memorizing dates. Few understand this better than Alice Leader, a history teacher whose debut book for children, “Power and Stone,” is a carefully researched and riveting ...

“The Eternity Code,” Eoin Colfer, Puffin Books; 2003; 329 pp. The 13-year-old, pint-size mastermind of every heist known to man — or to fairy — is back. And in the latest installment of the “Artemis Fowl” series, time is running out not for Artemis’ ...