Humor

The Great Good Thing by Roderick Townley

For ages and ages, no one had opened the book. Just as Sylvia sat weeping in boredom by the edge of the lake, pleading for something to happen, a fan of light began opening in a corner of the sky, sending flashes of color across the water. "Rawwwk! Reader!" screamed an orange bird. "Boooook open! Ooopen! Boook open!" groaned a bullfrog.

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

"Irish businessman will pay large amount of U.S. dollars to meet a fairy, sprite, leprechaun, or pixie."

The ad was posted on the Internet. Indeed, it generated numerous fraudulent responses, but the person who placed it only needed one true lead for his purposes. He had studied all he could in the mundane world he inhabited, but he knew the important secrets of the Fairy would only be known by others of their kind.

Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody

Green Rider by Kristen Britain

Totally disgraced after her expulsion from school, Karigan trudged homeward through the countryside. It wasn't an easy walk, more of a cross-country hike, really, but her shame and rage kept her moving even as she spent an aching night sleeping in a meadow and washed down some hunks of cheese and bread with less than clean brook water.

Suddenly from out of the dark woods, there came an explosion of red and green.

Sometimes it doesn't take years to become a great magician.

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Sophie talked to hats. No, they didn't answer her, but she talked to them just the same. "You have a heart of gold and someone in a high position will see it and fall in love you," she told one. Soon enough a plain-looking lass bought the plain bonnet and sailed off with the heart of the Count of Catterack.

Sweet orphaned Sylvia has come to live with her lively cousin Bonnie at the great English country house of Willoughby Chase. All should be wonderful, but the fast friends are plagued by an evil governess, Miss Slighcarp, who has wicked designs on the family fortune. Wolves lurk in the snowy forests, but so does a mysterious friend as the girls soon discover.

"I want to be a sheep-pig," he said.
"Ha ha!" bleated a big lamb standing next to Ma. "Ha ha ha-a-a-a-a!"
"Be quiet!" said Ma sharply, swinging her head to give the lamb a thumping butt in the side. "That ain't nothing to laugh at."

Pigs may herd sheep and perhaps even fly, but Dick King-Smith won't get on an airplane. He'd much rather travel by sea. The author of Babe, The Gallant Pig does have a dog named Fly after his favorite character in Babe. He says his Fly, a German Shepherd, is "beautiful, affectionate, intelligent, and as mad as a March hare."

When Astrid Lindgren was a little girl, a friend read her stories about the giant, Bam-Bam, and the fairy, Viribunda. Astrid Lindgren loved these stories. Some part of the author never grew up and the result is the enchanting adventures of the Children of Noisy Village, Ronia, the Robber's Daughter, and, of course, Pippi Longstocking.

"I write books for the child I am myself. I write about things that are dear to me--trees and houses and nature--just to please myself."