minzhi's recommendations in children's fiction for (what's left of) the summer:

non-fantasy

1. beverley birch: rift (adult and wise-child detective team investigating disappearance of british schoolchildren in africa, disturbing insight to the effects of instituitionalised malevolence and repression, and loving survey of the archaeological and geographical landscape of africa.)

2. mal peet: tamar (alternates between scenes of love, suspicion, and violence during the german occupation of the netherlands, and scenes in the present day, as granddaughter of dutch resistance leaders investigates grandparents' past.)

3. jan mark the electric telepath (scientifically-minded young boy growing up in the 1890s attempting to pass off his experiments with electricity to his repressive christian sect (of which his father is an elder) as mechanism for religious broadcast and finding his original fraud used by religious leaders inunscrupulous ways.)

4. cynthia lord: rules (a short, rather sweet one from the perspective of a sister attempting to help her autistic younger brother interpret cultural rules of social acceptability, while being frustrated in own search for acceptance and friendship.)

5. frank cottrell boyce: framed (mutual incomprehension when national gallery art curator comes amongst welsh mining town residents; transformative power of art, small town community life, and a farcical robbery attempt by the children at its climax)

6. m.t. anderson's the astonishing life of octavian nothing, vol 1. the pox party.

fantasy (many already mentioned at different times on this blog)

1. philip reeve: larklight (see here)

2. china mieville: un lun dun (see here)

3. kai meyer: dark reflections trilogy (whole set out in english now. see here.)

4. tom becker: darkside (one book only, but inconclusive ending so there must be sequels in the making - don't people write one-book fantasies anymore?)