Adventures of Pluck, Luck, and Derring-Do

For ages 8–14

These eight stories star courageous children and creatures of all shapes and sizes, including a lovable lobster and a trio of gnomes. In Jan Terlouw’s beloved Winter in Wartime, Michiel, a teenage boy in Nazi-occupied Holland, finds himself responsible for caring for a wounded British soldier hidden away in the woods. Eilís Dillon’s Lost Island and Island of Horses are two scrappy adventures of young boys exploring deserted islands off the Irish coast, and The Village by the Sea is a seaside journey of another sort: a modern classic from one of India’s most renowned writers, it follows the lives of a brother and sister working together to protest pollution and help their struggling family survive.

On the less human-centric side of things, Sheila Burnford, the author of The Incredible Journey, gives us the tale of an adorable dog’s travels across Europe amidst the Second World War in Bel Ria. Margery Sharp’s The Rescuers, adapted by Disney in 1977, has two mice stage a high-stakes rescue mission, while B.B.’s The Little Grey Men acquaints us with the very last gnomes in Britain as they search for their missing brother, encountering woodland friends and enemies along the way. And in The Curious Lobster, by Richard W. Hatch, the charming Mr. Lobster makes his first foray to dry land.