The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories Book

When I read a writer like Joan Aiken, I remember why I'm not giving five stars to a lot of other authors. Over the years, Aiken wrote a number of stories about the Armitage family, an "ordinary" British family who have a unicorn in the garden (shades of James Thurber!). Strange and magical things are especially likely to happen to the Armitages on Mondays, but occasionally they happen on different days, confusing everyone. For supposedly old-fashioned stories, these tales kick the booty out of most of what's being written today! Just to give you one example, watch for the delicious absurdity of two elderly druid brothers fighting over a bathmat made of beard hair, or the fact that the Borrowers-type small people in this book are fairly obnoxious and tacky, not darling. Then there's the poignancy of the title story... But whatever you do, remember that griffins are not only expensive pets, but heavy, and that quince trees are stolen for a reason.