Tag Archives: best books

The best books with portals for children and young adults

Best books with portals for children and young adults

I was asked by the people at new book recommendation site Shepherd to share my favourite books on things I’m passionate and write about. As many of you will know, The Secret of the Tirthas is about Lizzie Jones, a teenager who inherits a magical ‘garden of rooms’ deep in the Herefordshire countryside and then discovers each of the rooms has a portal to a special place on the planet.

I always thought it would be great if you could step outside your back door and travel instantaneously to somewhere on the other side of the planet. And, of course, portals are a neat analogy for the power of the imagination.

So my first selection of books for Shepherd is my five favourite books with portals for children and young adults. They include books by Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman and you can check them out here.

Do you like portals in books? If so, which are your favourites?

Who are your Inspirational Authors?

Roald Dahl - inspirational authors

I’ve started a new A-Z of authors who have inspired my writing on my Instagram page, using the hashtag #stevegreads.

I’ve just got to D, which was a tough choice between Helen Dunmore, a fantastic author and poet who died sadly last year, Bob Dylan, whose biography Chronicles lived up to his epic career of songwriting, and Roald Dahl.

In the end I had to choose Roald Dahl, whose irreverent, joyful stories were a high point of my childhood reading. And which are now making me happy for a second time, as I read them with my two boys.

Which authors do you keep going back to? Who has inspired you the most?