I confess--I have no children, and yet I read children's books. Sometimes I simply don't have the mental energy to crack open a serious adult book (think The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, or Truth, by Simon Blackburn) or even a piece of light fiction (think Carl Hiaasen or James Hynes). Instead, I'll turn to some old favorites from my childhood, along with a few newer ones that have joined them in recent years. Because my tastes ran to science fiction and fantasy when I was young, these recommendations all have a similar flavor.

I've always been a fan of Roald Dahl, for both his children's books and his adult offerings. The BFG is one of his most charming books for children. The BFG is a Giant who kidnaps a little orphan, Sophie, and takes her off to his cave. The BFG turns out not to be a bad sort, however--in part because he doesn't share with his monstrous giant brothers "a most squackling whoppsy appetite" for eating children--and teams up with Sophie (and the Queen of England) to do battle against those evil brothers of his, Bloodbottler, Bonecruncher, Childchewer, Fleshlumpeater, Gizzardgulper, Maidmasher, Manhugger, Meatdripper, and Butcher Boy. The BFG's creative use of language is the best part of the book, though Quentin Blake's illustrations come a close second.

The Forgotten Door, by Alexander Key, introduces us to Little Jon, who falls through the old Door, "the Door that led to another place, the one that had been closed so long." Jon is struck on the head, and when he awakens, he discovers that he's lost his memory.  Jon is not an ordinary boy.  When he talks to animals, the animals actually listen (though I don't recall Jon ever talking to a cat in the story); Jon in turn can read their thoughts.  He has a few other mysterious abilities, which the family who finds him learns about as the story goes on. It's a classic theme: Jon needs to find his way back home. There's a striking current of distrust of big government that runs through the end of this 1965 book, adding an interesting contrast for the modern reader to think about.

Edith Nesbit wrote dozens of children's stories in the late 1800s and early 1900s, among them The Enchanted Castle, in 1907. I first read this book when I found it in one of the attic bedrooms of my grandparents' house, decades ago, and I found it irresistible. Four English children, three living with a French governess and the fourth the niece of the castle's housekeeper, discover a magic ring and find out what it can do. The writing moves at a slower pace than modern children's books, and the children sometimes don't sound like children at all, but it's all worthwhile. You'll be reminded of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, published just a year later, and you'll understand why C.S. Lewis cites Nesbit as an influence on his Narnia novels. (Grahame and Lewis are worth reading as well, of course.) 

Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials, begins with The Golden Compass (titled Northern Lights in the UK). The most engaging conceit in these books is that, in the parallel-world setting of the story, people are accompanied by daemons, their souls embodied in the form of animals. Adult daemons are in the form of animals that reflect their personalities: a servant might have a dog daemon, a scholar an owl or a raven daemon. Children's daemons can change shape until the child reaches adolescence. Young Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon happen into a mystery that could affect not only their world but our Earth as well, and even the afterlife. The promise of the first two books isn't quite met in the last, but they're all well worth reading (the second and third books are The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass). One of my favorite bits of Pullman's writing, which helps establish the tone for the narration, is an early description of Lyra: "She was a coarse and greedy little savage, for the most part." Lyra does grow up eventually, though it's a long, hard journey.

Finally, I should mention Neil Gaiman's work: Coraline is one of my favorites, and it turns out that I've written a book review of The Graveyard Book, for the OS Book Club.  (I've included the text below. It only covers the first three chapters and presumes that you've read those already.)

Happy summertime reading! 

[O]ne of the most basic tests of comprehension is to ask someone to read aloud from a book. It reveals far more than whether the reader understands the words. It reveals how far into the words — and the pattern of the words — the reader really sees.

-- Verlyn Klinkeborg, in the New York Times.

Klinkeborg's essay explores some of the subtle ways in which reading aloud is different from reading silently and is well worth reading. If I were to write such an essay, though, it would concentrate on the more obvious differences: it makes reading a social rather than private activity; it requires closer attention in some ways than silent reading; perhaps most interesting is that it slows the reader down, sometimes enough to appreciate more of the texture of a story.

Neil Gaiman writes wonderful, allusive fiction, with close attention to language. Over the past couple of weeks I've been reading The Graveyard Book aloud to my wife (we've read to each other for years). The Graveyard Book has been a pleasure. I've read a good deal of mythology and modern fantastic fiction, and as often happens the slower pace of reading aloud has let my mind turn over the words I'm saying long enough that I can recognize familiar people, places, and ideas. You doubtless do this yourself when you're reading silently, and I won't claim any great insights (I'm not even a writer), but here are some of the thoughts that have run through my mind while reading The Graveyard Book.

An unfortunate happening in the house...

The Graveyard Book opens with a focus (literally, with Dave McKean's drawing of a hand) on "the man Jack". He is not quite an everyman, as his name suggests; he is a murderer carrying a knife. Now, a knife-wielding Jack in an English setting will naturally suggest Jack the Ripper, but more specifically it may suggest a character also named Jack (no last name, and never explicitly identifed as the Ripper) in A Night in the Lonesome October, by Roger Zelazny. Night is a pastiche of cliches in the literary and film horror genres, witty and engaging, especially so due to Gahan Wilson's illustrations, with a new story laid over it all. Sound familiar?

We are then introduced to a toddler who escapes from his crib. I couldn't help being reminded of Ray Bradbury's short story, "The Small Assassin", in The October Country, which describes an even younger character who is... different from other infants. Angry. Capable. Dangerous. In Graveyard the roles are reversed, but it's still an interesting possible influence. Babies might not be as helpless as they seem.

When the man Jack discovers the toddler missing and stops to sniff the air, I immediately thought of Grenouille in Patrick Susskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, who would have done exactly the same thing. Of course, so would any number of fairy tale villains: ogres, trolls, and other not-quite-human monsters. Scary. And the chase is on.

In the graveyard among the ghosts...

When the toddler is named by the ghosts, we encounter a familiar humorous exchange:

"And what kind of a name is Nobody?" asked Mother Slaughter, scandalized.
"His name."

It's a touch of Joseph Heller. In Catch-22:

What's his name?"
"Yossarian, sir," Lieutenant Scheisskopf said.
"Yes, Yossarian. That's right. Yossarian. Yossarian? Is that his name? Yossarian? What the hell kind of name is Yossarian?"
Lieutenant Scheisskopf had the facts at his fingertips. "It's Yossarian's name, sir," he explained.

Bod grows up among the ghosts, his guardian being Silas (there are suggestions that Silas is a vampire, though this is not stated explicitly). At five, he meets Scarlett, a (live) little girl about the same age. They explore the graveyard together, with one expedition requiring the use of a key that Bod has not really been forbidden to use, to visit a place that Bod has not exactly been forbidden to visit--but we get the idea that grownups would frown on this adventure. Gaiman has used this sort of situation before, in Coraline, and of course it is a staple in fairy tales, with Bluebeard being perhaps the most famous example.

In the underworld of the ghouls...

In a sleepy state of mind, Alice Bod encounters a white rabbit trio of ghouls, in old-fashioned dress, and shortly thereafter falls through the opening to a rabbit hole grave, where all sorts of adventures await underground... Gaiman's ghouls are very different from Lewis Carroll's creatures, though they are just as self-centered and do tend to obsess about food. It's a much less pleasant experience for Bod, though, than for Alice.

Gaiman is delving into older fantasies with Bod's journey to Ghulheim, the city of the ghouls. (Heim is German for "home", which I take to be a nod toward the brothers Grimm.) These older sources include Alice in Wonderland, as I've mentioned, and we're further reminded of much earlier stories of Persephone's kidnapping by Hades, lord of the underworld, and of Dis, the City of the Dead (as described in Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Inferno).

I'll stick with a few more modern allusions: Ghulheim bears some resemblance (in my mind) to a fictional city in Gaiman's own earlier Sandman comic book series: the necropolis Litharge, which is populated by corpse-like creatures who maintain all knowledge of the rituals of dying and death. I found the description of Ghulheim evocative in a visual sense as well; the spikiness of the buildings and the wrongness of the angles brought to mind the sets of Dr. Caligari, pictured below, and perhaps the animations in a Tim Burton movie. Maybe that's just me, but I've thought this in the past about some of McKean's illustrations. Spooky.

Bod is eventually rescued from his kidnappers with the help of night-gaunts. These will remind some of  the cliff-ghasts in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy: scary-sounding, not-very-birdlike, intelligent flying creatures. Gaiman's creatures turn out to be good guys; Pullman's creatures (like his night-ghasts) not so friendly. And at the end of Bod's close encounter with a night-gaunt, we find another allusion to Bradbury: the night-gaunt takes off like a kite, just as another character does at the end of a different story in The October Country.

Bod's actual savior is Miss Lupescu, who turns out to be a werewolf (lupus is Latin for wolf). There are many literary relationships between vampires (such as Silas, possibly) and werewolves (such as Miss Lupescu); one possible allusion is to Bram Stoker's short story, "Dracula's Guest", which is widely believed to be a prequel or first chapter to Dracula. In the short story, the narrator encounters difficulties on Walpurgis Night. With an unfriendly vampire. In a graveyard. During a snowstorm. Toward the end of the story, with the narrator going in and out of consciousness, a gigantic wolf that he'd thought an enemy turns out to be an ally and his savior. There are some thematic similarities, though these may be accidental.