100 books like Skunk and Badger

It’s a family of badgers but Frances has some very human emotions about having a baby sibling. She is not outright hostile but does pack a rucksack with snacks and runs away – as far as under the dining table. Her very understanding parents handle it in an exemplary fashion and Frances sees there are advantages to being the older sister, since babies can’t eat chocolate cake.

This hilarious series is totally bonkers but full of sibling love and loyalty. The writing is witty and surprising, and a great fantastical read. The intrepid heroes are brother and sister, Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face and we follow them as they set off on a nail-biting but very silly adventure. I love books about sibling relationships as children seem to spend SO much time bickering with their brothers and sisters and I think books can be a great way to remind them how awesome their sibling really is and how lucky they are to have a brother or sister to love them!

It's a book more centered on Frances and not so much on friendship but I live for the moments between Frances and her friend Albert in this story. Because Frances has foolishly committed to eating just her favorite lunch every day, bread and jam, she listens with great interest as Albert lays out his entire elaborate midday meal at school. I used to always read this story aloud to my two boys doing my best Jack Nicholson impression for Albert's voice. I don't have a specific reason for why I did it but it really felt like it added to the whole experience. 

This book (and its two sequels) presents a place where all sorts of monsters and unwanted creepy-crawlies can find shelter and a home—Julia’s house.

It’s a book about inclusion and acceptance and maybe even some bad manners. All of Ben Hatke’s books are smartly told and beautifully drawn (Zita te Space Girl, Mighty Jack, Nobody Likes a Goblin)—but even with a simple story, the magic on every page is evident, and one can linger on the pictures well past the time it takes to read the words. 

Whenever I read this book’s opening lines, I sink under the author’s magic spell.

Forget Faulkner, forget Joyce, try Grahame’s poetic prose. When Grahame wrote this, the whole idea of writing books for kids was still fresh, and the idea of anthropomorphic animals was novel, too. The book is so good it still seems like something new under the sun. 

If you don’t have a child available, pretend that a wise, kind adult is reading the book to you.

In 2017, Puerto Rico was hit by Hurricane Maria, and later on in September, an earthquake struck Mexico City, inspiring Estelí to write a story about a rabbit called Conejo, who loses his house after a storm strikes his neighborhood, but, with the help of others, he is able to rebuild what he had lost.

I think that it is very important to acknowledge and accept that sometimes in life, bad things will happen, plans will get ruined, and things will be lost, but that it is only with the help of others that we can stay strong, start again, and carry on. We need more books about kindness and a sense of community!

I love the textures, color, and sophisticated shapes of Estelí’s characters!

How are women supposed to behave, discreetly? Are their friendships always a saccharine Hallmark card? Not in this novel. Living loudly, louchely, in chaos, with hedonistic nights out and all-day hangovers, Laura and Tyler are a tight, whip-funny twosome… except one has a wedding on the horizon to a teetotal stable man, and she’s wrestling with whether marriage is a legitimate life milestone anymore. The friendship portrayal here is a messy, clever, and foul-mouthed foray into the moment when inseparable friends face the prospect of their familiar relationship disappearing through the unstoppable forces of adult life. And we’ve all had impossible choices when we haven’t known which loyalties to put first – one’s duty to oneself or to one’s best friend?

Skippy Dies is nearly 700 pages long, but I wished it had been longer, it was that fun to read. It’s both tragically sad and laugh-out-loud funny—a difficult feat for any writer to pull off, and Irish novelist Paul Murray does so brilliantly. I’m not giving away anything by saying that the protagonist dies—after all, he dies in the book’s title—but I won’t reveal how or the circumstances. Let’s just say that if you are a diminutive, shy, buck-toothed 14-year-old at an all-boys boarding school in Dublin and somehow manage to develop a crush on the girlfriend of an older, drug-dealing, violent bully…well, things can’t turn out good. The cast of characters—the teenagers, the teachers, the school principal—are wonderfully drawn. Murray’s dialogue captures the boasting machismo as well as the angsty insecurities of teenage boyhood. A real gem.

There is so much to love about this book. Not only will it heat you up hotter than the summer sun, but it will make you laugh-out-loud! What I liked about this book besides the humor, steam, and compelling story was the sex-positive writing, the intimacy, and the sex-worker storyline. I love the message of women seeking, finding, and expecting pleasure from their lovers. This needs to be in more books! It is one that is overlooked and detrimental to relationships. Last, I adored the characters, especially Josh. He was so damn sweet and sexy but flawed enough to feel real. Another aspect I enjoyed was the opposites attract theme (it's another one of my favorites), and it doesn't get more opposite than an adult entertainer and blue blood under her parent's thumb.

Flatshare is one of the only romantic comedies on the market to include a hospice setting, which is one of the reasons I love it. The story features two characters forced to share a one-bedroom flat due to financial constraints. Tiffy gets the flat overnight while Leon works in the hospice, and when he comes home from his night shift the flat is his until Tiffy returns.

The premise (they share a bed, but they’ve never met) is often cited by those in the publishing world as ‘the perfect hook’ – grabbing your attention and making you want to read on. But Flatshare is about much more than a good hook - O’Leary delivers a perfectly executed, smart, sassy novel that’s guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.