Somehow McManus became a comfort read for me when I was about 10 or so. A Fine and Pleasant Misery appeared in my room one day, and I read it, and somehow that was that. I took them to all of my stressful appointments. Another comfort read that went with me to scary things: The Book of Night With Moon. I also liked to read cookbooks as a kid. My mom has a huge collection, so I had a lot to choose from.
I've got one in comic book form: Rachel Hartman's Amy Unbounded comics. It was a series of small-press mini-comics about a young girl living in a richly flavored little medieval world that happened to have dragons in it. I was amazed to find out as an adult that Hartman had gone on to write a novel taking place in the same world! A secondary character from the comics even appears as part of the plot, and Amy's grumpy old uncle Cuthbert has a cameo. It's called Seraphina and it's pretty great, and I must assume its sequel Shadow Scale is also.
I just recently read Seraphina! I really like it! I'm partway through Shadow Scale now and can confirm it is also pretty great. I didn't know there was a comic book set in the same universe, I'll have to look into that! A lot of my childhood favorites have already been mentioned - Artemis Fowl, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Warriors, Redwall, the Tortal books. And I mean, obviously Harry Potter, but that kinda goes without saying. Some other favorites: The Bartimaeus Sequence, by Jonathan Stroud. I love all the snarky footnote commentary :P And I will never be done crying about Ptolemy ;n; The Dragonback series, by Timothy Zahn, because it's a really interesting take on dragons and it's dragons and spaceships what more could you want? The Skulduggery Pleasant series, by Derek Landy, which I haven't actually finished yet but have been meaning to get back to eventually. The Temeraire series, by Naomi Novik! I don't know that I can call that one a childhood favorite, since I didn't actually discover it until I was an adult, but I really love it.
oh gosh the Bartimaeus series -flails- anyway i have a book somewhere named "a Wolf at the Door - and Other Retold Fairytales" or something like that. super, super good, think it's one of those collections of short stories by different authors but i'm not sure. i'll try to post a link to it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006VFZROC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 ta-da one of my favorites was the story about a girl finding this painting of the seasons in a museum and they teach her a story about ...well, realizing the good in her family, especially her stepsister. the steps actually finds the painting first, but they get different reactions/spells from it.
I can't remeber the name, but there was this book about a kid and a dragon, and they were trying to save the other dragons who'd all turned into statues from lack of moonlight, and there was an artifically created dragon running around trying to kill all the others
@TheLittlestHero The rough thing is that the Amy Unbounded comics are out of print. It was a hand-stapled kind of situation. There was a mass-market paperback collecting part of the story called Belondweg Blossoming, but that's not in print anymore either afaik.
The first one was called Dragon Rider (by Cornelia Funke) and then I think there were further ones in the series? MAN that was a good book.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/166161-dragon-rider I never read the rest, but it looks like there might be more?
I read that! but don't remember anything other than that it was good. but this reminded me of Inkheart, which I loved so much, where this guy who works as a bookbinder and his daughter can bring characters out of books by reading them out loud, but only by sending someone into the book. And there's Dustfinger, who is kind of a trainwreck (if i remember correctly), but also so great, and he has a marten with horns as a pet (the most important fact)
[inhales sharply] off the top of my head: a whole lotta jacqueline wilson, basically every roald dahl, literally every single pony series i could get my hands on (though my favourite was one called sea horses i think)(and my secret unicorn of course) there were a lot of classics too, e. nesbit and enid blyton (though i always thought blyton was a bit wet) and the secret garden of course, my first ~big-girl book~ i also really like the stones are hatching and a pack of lies by geraldine mccaughrean oh yeah, and the machine gunners by robert westall, along with his creepy-af short stories and joan aiken's wolves of willoughby chase and who can forget the ever venerable series of unfortunate events i'll stop now before i go full-sperg mode because good god do i love kid's lit
found this again by accident when i was googling something else, I read the Charlie Bone series as a kiddo (was it a series?) and i remember loving it and i need to read it again
