Kicking myself, Konigsburg, Kipling

After the famine, the feast.

Wouldn't you just know it.  Hours after I put up a short and simple "K" post, the above walks into my brain.  I don't know how I could have forgotten either of these completely kickass authors, but there you go.  And another K as well.

E L Konigsburg is more likely to be familiar to US audiences.  As far as I know she is a fairly regular staple in American schoolrooms (that's how I found her), but From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler is well worth a look.  It won't even take you long.  Her books (children and YA with only a few exceptions) are extremely economical.  Don't let the length deceive you.  She packs a lot into those pages. 

The basic premise is wonderful.  Claudia decides to run away from her unappreciative family and picks the Metropolitan Museum of Art as her hideout.  This appealed to me hugely at the age of about 12.  She selects her brother Jamie to accompany her and they do exactly what they plan.  Once in the museum, she becomes obsessed with a small statue of an angel and Claudia's search for the artist becomes the story's focus.

Illustration from the book by E L Konigsburg.

Kipling is an obvious literary giant, but he isn't much in fashion today as he wrote in and about the colonial era and we all tend to prefer that never happened.  In the interests of redressing the balance a little, I draw your attention to the following:

The Jungle Book
The Second Jungle Book
Just So Stories
Puck of Pook's Hill
Rewards and Fairies
Kim

Technically all the above are children's books, but really, give them a try.  Disney did a great take on The Jungle Book but the original stories are another thing entirely.  Plus the man gives a flavour of India like nobody else I've ever read.