E Nesbit was the inventor of the modern children's adventure story. Less well known than Five Children and It or The Railway Children, this to my mind is her most imaginative book

E. Nesbit's book The Enchanted Castle included a terrifying scene in which the children put on a play and dress up some brooms and brushes in hats and coats as an audience. These creatures, which they call the Ugly-Wugglies, come to life clapping before chasing the children. I was chilled - I still find it chilling today

Despite [Nesbit's] fantastic plots, which generally hinge on some highly imaginative form of magic - her books were among the earliest to portray kids from their own point of view. Nesbit's best-known characters, the independent-minded Bastable children, jockey fiercely for position among themselves, but they always unite in the face of adult intervention

Sometimes you have to break the rules, particularly when those rules are based on prejudice. Naidoo breaks the rules, producing books for young people which recognize that they want to know about the real world

Genuinely enlightening ... gently moves the reader through areas that are hard to think about.