Reading: Children's Books

Late in my 100+ Reading Challenge post, I speculated about cheating on the challenge by reading children's books. I've decided that that's a dandy strategy.

So I'll shortly have my hands on:

• Missing Melinda, by Jacqueline Jackson. I loved this book, about a pair of twins that were named Cordelia and Ophelia through no fault of their own, investigating the strangeness around a stolen doll named Melinda.
• The Changeling, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. About two girls, outcasts in different ways, and the fictional world that they create. I associate this book with an essay-writing contest that I participated in in junior high or possibly high school. In the timed limits of the contest, I couldn't come up with anything to say about a book likely to impress the judges - The Scarlet Letter, say - so I wrote about The Changeling instead. It was a losing strategy, of course. But I rather wish that I had the essay.
• The Velvet Room, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I remember loving this book, but I can't remember a thing about it. I'll report back when I read it again.
• The Midnight Folk, by John Masefield. I've never touched this one, but so many of the other books in the New York Review Children's collection are wonderful that it seems worthwhile to try them all.
• The Mousewife, by Rumer Godden. Rumer Godden may be my favorite author, and I don't recall ever reading this one. So it's about time.

Image: By Ivana Halabalova. Wikimedia Commons.