What are the best retellings and sequels of classic books for kids?

From Five Children and It to What Katy Did, the Book Doctor explores fabulous sequels and retellings of classic tales with a modern twist, and the reason why we need them

Chatting to the Psammead, in the film version of Five Children and It from 2004. Photograph: Snap Stills/REX

Julia Eccleshare

Monday 20 July 2015 

I love the classic stories but I’ve read most of them already and some of them are a bit too old-fashioned both in the writing and the attitudes of the characters! What do you think are the best sequels and modern retellings of classic children’s books?

Many children’s authors have been inspired to become writers because they so loved reading as children. In fact, all writers say that the best preparation for becoming a writer is to be a good reader. And most can trace the inspirations for their own writing back to a single author.

Piers Torday, winner of the Guardian Children’s fiction prize for The Dark Wild, has cited CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia novels as a major influence on him because in Lewis’s childhood writing he created a world of talking animals – as Pier’s does in his Wild sequence of stories. 
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