The best middle-grade books for fantastic homes

This is my favorite Roald Dahl book because it infuses his trademark craziness with actual character development and genuine warmth. (Not to mention class commentary even a kid can understand.) The bond between Danny and his loving father is grounded in their going-nowhere wooden caravan—a tiny house before tiny houses were even a thing. It’s a humble abode, but it’s also safe, cozy, and self-contained, exactly the kind of place a kid dreams of living…even if using the outhouse in the back is “like sitting in an icebox” in winter!

L’Engle doesn’t give us a high-definition picture of Meg Murry’s home, but she does offer lots of tantalizing details: it’s nearly two hundred years old, it sits on a hill outside of town, there’s a forest in back and an orchard nearby, and her twin brothers have a treehouse. Even cooler, Meg’s bedroom is in the attic (even though she’s sometimes afraid to be alone in it) and her scientist mother has a lab off the kitchen. But my absolute favorite thing about the “pleasant, if shabby” Murry house is the way midnight visitors are treated with perfect hospitality—and no one bats an eye when even the craziest things happen.

Ten-year-old Lewis Barnavelt, suddenly orphaned, is sent to live with his Uncle Jonathan at 100 High Street in New Zebedee, Michigan. There he finds himself in a hilltop mansion both odd and fascinating: among his discoveries are ancient coins, a secret passage behind a bookcase, and the fact that Uncle Jonathan is a warlock. The only bad news is that the weird and wonderful house holds a potentially world-ending secret inside its walls. Simultaneously warm and scary, this is my favorite haunted-house story of all time.

Apartment buildings are surprisingly rare in kidlit, and this “glittery, glassy apartment house” on the Lake Michigan shore is one-of-a-kind, filled with the kind of eccentric characters only Raskin can create. (The Westing House referred to in the title is pretty interesting, too, but as a kid who grew up in an ordinary house, I found the apartment building far more interesting!) This perennially popular puzzle book is like a three-dimensional game of Clue, only with a lot more surprises. The first page alone holds so many irresistible contradictions that I defy anyone to stop reading.

The townsfolk of Market Chipping, in the land of Ingary, are terrified of the smoke-billowing castle that rumbles across the wasteland—but hatmaker Sophie isn’t particularly put off. After all, the Witch of the Waste has turned her into a crone, and when she’s caught out in the open at nightfall, she’s getting downright chilly. When the castle rumbles toward her, she hails it like a taxi—and it obediently stops. You’ll want to climb right into Wynne Jones’s unforgettable work of imagination, too.