98 books like The Matchstick Castle

Miranda Sinclair is a latchkey kid who lives with her single mom on the Upper West Side of New York City in the late 1970s. I love the way Miranda navigates her dirty, dangerous, yet enchanting city – her street smarts, her fears, her relationships with the adults in the neighborhood who keep a watchful eye over her. And the book, while totally gritty and real, also has a lovely, melancholy element of magical realism that makes the story mysterious and poignant. 

Lois Ruby is a YA veteran who has more than 20 books to her name, many of them historical fiction, including the beloved Steal Away Home, which appeared on basically every year-end best list back in 1994. She also happens to be my mom. And her latest book, which takes place during the “red scare” of the 1950s, is among her best. It’s a tense story about a baseball-crazy 13-year-old boy whose parents are accused of being communist sympathizers, turning his life upside down when he’s supposed to be studying for his bar mitzvah. The clock-ticking backdrop, leading up to the notorious execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for supposedly passing on nuclear secrets to the Soviets, gives the whole book terrifyingly high stakes.

The older I get, the more I appreciate fantasy stories with lower, more personal stakes than, for example, saving the world from impending doom. I want the escapism of fantasy and magic grounded in emotions and scenarios I can relate to in some small way.  

The Bone Houses is, amongst the walking corpses, the undead goat, the Welsh folklore, and the magic cauldron, a story about a young woman grieving for her father, and a young man searching for family. I found this book when I was still working through the grief of losing my own father—a Welshman and a miner just like the father in the story—and it felt like it had been written just for me. 

I admit I have never entirely warmed to most graphic novels, but this one, the first in the Bone series, is timeless. The epic adventures of cousins Fone Bone, Smiley Bone, and Phoney Bone—all of whom look like a cross between Casper the Friendly Ghost and a giant tooth—start here with lots of slapstick and cutesy animals. But there’s a lot going on under the surface. It’s a twisted fairy tale with striking art, endearing characters, and swashbuckling adventure. The whole thing is packed with so many whimsical ideas and situations that whenever I read it, I find myself energized and eager to write.

With a sacred stone in hand, twelve-year-old Kino hides from bullies in an ancient grass hut on display at Bishop Museum. In a blinding flash, she travels back in time to 1825 and meets a young boy who is destined to become King Kamehameha III. Together they go on an epic adventure facing sharks, Night Marchers, wild boars, and more as they collect the four items Kino needs to return home. I love this fantasy story with Hawaiian kids as heroes because it treats Hawaiian history and culture as both magical and ordinary rather than sensationally exotic.

I think it is an excellent example of how ingenuity and mutual loving support can overcome an otherwise devastating event.

When Beth Haslam and her hilariously grumpy husband, Jack, and their lovable dogs, set off to buy a second home in rural France, they didn't expect to become part-time foresters, raising rare breed pheasants and caring for wild boar. In this fourth episode of Beth's excellent five-part memoir series, the Haslam's have their lives turned upside-down when a raging storm devastates vast sections of their forest. As if this disaster wasn't already bad enough, the authorities then demanded that the 1,000s of fallen trees be removed. But at what cost? Is their idyllic French retirement over, or can they recover and rebuild without going bust?

This late-90s account of Modzelewski’s time among the islands of the Inside Passage north of Vancouver is a little bit out there, figuratively as well as literally; the symbolism can be a wee bit heavy at times (“inside passage” — get it?). But the life he portrays, the incredible beauty and power of this part of the world, the characters he describes so indelibly, make this a book that I’ve gone back to again and again.

Momentarily leaving the fantastic behind, let’s look at a real-life adventure in a time when travel to Earth’s extremities was not as easy as it is today. Even a single century in the past, explorers like Amundsen endured great hardship trying to reach places like the South Pole. On a journey of relative comfort, consider what it might’ve been like with a slightly lower level of technology, and face a reminder that humans are not quite the masters of the world’s untamable elements that we may think we are.

Robert Scott was a failure, and beloved for it. He died like a British hero should, gallantly and writing it up in his journal. He, and the four other men who died with him, are memorialized all over Britain: plaques, statues, museums. Huntford is the first modern historian to kick a hole in that mythology, pointing out the many mistakes that Capt. Scott made that, cumulatively, doomed his quest for the South Pole. Was it really sensible, to put cavalry captain Titus Oates in charge of the ponies but then not let him choose the animals? For that matter, ponies? On a glacier? Huntford contrasts him to Scott’s rival the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who did everything right, breezed to the Pole with teams of sled dogs, and even gained weight on the way back.

Ernest Shackleton is now best known for the heroic failure that was his Endurance Expedition of 1914-17. But the skills that he displayed to such effect on that expedition were honed during his leadership of the British Antarctic (or Nimrod) Expedition of 1907-09 – an expedition with the conquest of the South Pole as its primary objective. Of course, in the final assessment, this expedition failed as well – because Shackleton turned for home when just 97.5 nautical miles from his objective, knowing that his team would die if he didn’t. Beau Riffenburgh’s account of this much less well-known expedition is masterly: meticulously researched and beautifully written; a joy to read.