I forgot to mention PG Wodehouse's early school stories. They're public school-based and don't have his usual humorous touch, but they're good reads. Several feature house and inter-school cricket matches as the main plot, and there are a number set in fictitious schools, St Austin's and Wrykyn.

Penguin used to have three compilations of three short novels each (The Gold Bat and Other School Stories; The Pothunters and Other School Stories, and a third whose name I forget). You can still find these compilations easily on bibliofind.

The Mike stories are are often based around cricket, as he's a future county cricketer (although he doesn't have FEC on his bag). Mike at Wrykyn, and Mike and Psmith are the ones set in school.

Tove Jansson, Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, JRR Tolkien - I think I was about eight when I first read these authors and they've stayed with me all my life. It's certainly high time for The Hobbit if they haven't yet encountered it.

For those with pre-teen children and a bent for the fantasy genre, my son is currently obsessed with the "heir" series (Warrior's heir, Wizard's heir, Dragon Heir) by a woman named Cinda Willams Chima. Percy Jackson-ish but not played for laughs so much - more "grown up".

Probably too late ursus, but the Artemis Fowl books definitely work better if read in order.

Not too late, and good to know.

M'lovely daughter (8¼) is currently enjoying BB's The Little Grey Men, a pastoral account of the tribulations of a group of elves that reads very charmingly. In fact, the sheer density of references to the bucolic idyll in which the story set, is impressive in itself.

I'm reading it to her, but she's not far off being able to read it herself.

Young Master Grundy is, as every good 8-year-old boy should be, right in the middle of his Roman phase, and he loves Caroline Sullivan's Roman Mysteries series. Having been with him to a reading she gave she certainly seems to have teh right stuff, so they are definitely recommended.

Oh, and after much pestering by me he finally relented and read Robert Westall's magnificent The Machine Gunners while we were in Cornwall. And he loved it so much he immediately re-read it twice. Warmed the cockles to see him loving a book I adored so utterly, it did.

The Machine Gunners was one of my favourite books, too. I don't seem to be able to get my son to read it, though.