Rebecca Stead's top 10 American children's classics you may have missed

US author Rebecca Stead is in the running for the Guardian children's fiction prize with her novel Liar and Spy. Here she picks her favourite classic American novels for children that may be overlooked outside her home country

               

    Rebecca Stead

• theguardian.com, Thursday 8 August 2013                

The fascinating Ingalls family from Little House On The Prairie. Photograph: Fotos International/Hulton

1. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Meg, her unusual little brother Charles Wallace, and her new friend (crush) Calvin cross time and space to discover the truth about Meg's father, a scientist who has been missing for more than a year. Despite Meg's bad moods and doubts about herself, she holds the key to their survival.

2. Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C O'Brien

Determined mother mouse braves the company of some very unusual rats in order to save the lives of her family. (Meanwhile, the scientifically altered, super-intelligent rats have their own agenda.)

3. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler by EL Konigsburg

Claudia, feeling unappreciated, runs away from home to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with her brother in tow (because he's good with money). There, the kids make themselves at home (standing on toilet seats at closing time to evade the guards) until questions about an angel sculpture of mysterious origin draw them back into the world.

4. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

A New York girl with an anti-authoritarian streak and a writing habit alienates her friends when they read her notebook, where she has written what she really thinks of all of them. This one made me contemplate what it would be like if everyone at school could read my thoughts, and also what it would be like to have a townhouse and a cook.

5. All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor

The first in a series of chapter books about the lives of five sisters in a working-class, Jewish family living on Manhattan's lower east side in the early 1900s. Though entirely realistic, this one was magical to me.

6. Half Magic by Edward Eager

Kids discover a magic coin that provides exactly half of whatever is wished for. Great fun. I still remember the diorama I made for this one in grade school. It included a plastic baby suspended on invisible string. Transporting and timeless.

7. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

Mind-bending and original in the extreme. Characters bequeathed apartments in a mysterious building have to figure out the truth about their benefactor. I somehow missed this one during childhood, but made sure my sons didn't.

8. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

An inventive, playful story about Milo, a kid bored by life who enters mysterious worlds via a cardboard tollbooth that shows up at his house one day. Accompanied by an impossible dog named Toc, he discovers odd creatures, difficult missions, and the fact that there may be one or two things to be excited about in his own universe.

9. Charlotte's Web by EB White

Perhaps the perfect book, this one has it all: A tale of suspense, honesty, and love in a barnyard where the stakes are life and death. Wilbur, sweet but naïve pig, is soon to be slaughtered – what can he, a wise spider and a grouchy rat do to change his destiny?

10. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Fascinating to the kid I was and to most kids I know today, a story about what it was like to live in a poor (but loving) farming family in Midwestern America during the mid-1800s. Part of a series that follows the characters through their lives.