Best Books About Wholesome Young Adult Fiction by Katherine Rundell

Katherine Rundell is one of the most celebrated children’s authors of her generation - a Fellow of St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, a scholar of John Donne, and a writer whose novels have won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and the Carnegie Medal. Her books are adventurous, joyful and beautifully written, and they are entirely clean: there is no explicit content, no cynicism and no gratuitous darkness in anything she has written.

For readers and parents who want young adult fiction with wonder, wit and no content to skip, Rundell is an essential author. This guide walks through her best work in a practical order.

Why Rundell Is Essential for Wholesome Young Adult Fiction#

Rundell’s gift is joy. Her books are about children who are brave, curious and gloriously alive - children who run across rooftops, cross the Arctic, befriend wolves and explore the wild. Her prose is famous for its precision and beauty - she is a poet as well as a novelist - and her sentences reward reading aloud. And her worldview is one of complete confidence in children: she believes they are capable of courage, intelligence and wonder, and she writes for them with total respect.

Her books are also entirely clean. Rundell writes adventure with real peril and real danger, but the peril is never graphic and the darkness is always balanced by light. Parents trust her books, teachers assign them, and children read them with delight.

The Essential Start: Rooftoppers#

Rooftoppers (2013)#

The novel that made Rundell famous: Sophie, a baby found floating in a cello case after a shipwreck, is raised by Charles, an eccentric scholar who believes in the impossible. When the authorities threaten to take Sophie away because her mother - presumed drowned - cannot be found, Charles and Sophie flee to Paris, where Sophie climbs onto the rooftops and discovers a community of children who live above the city, and a clue to her mother’s fate.

It is the essential Rundell: the novel is a love letter to the imagination - its famous line, “Never ignore a possible,” is its creed - and its portrait of the rooftop world of Paris is one of the great settings in children’s literature. The book is entirely clean, and its ending is one of the most satisfying in modern children’s fiction. If you read only one Rundell book, this is the one.

Rooftoppers, and the Art of the Possible#

The genius of Rooftoppers is its philosophy. Charles tells Sophie that “if you intend to be happy, you must believe that the impossible can happen” - and the novel lives up to that creed: the rooftop children walk on slates and chimneys, the cello case carries Sophie through the waves, and the impossible ending is earned by the novel’s complete commitment to possibility. Rundell writes with the confidence of a storyteller who knows that children do not need cynicism - they need wonder, and they need the tools to survive it. The novel is also a portrait of unconventional family: Charles is not Sophie’s father, but he is her family, and the book’s celebration of found families is one of the reasons it has been so beloved.

If You Want the Arctic Adventure: The Wolf Wilder#

The Wolf Wilder (2015)#

Rundell’s most atmospheric novel: Feodora - Feo - lives with her mother in the snows of Russia, where they are wolf wilders: people who teach captive wolves to be wild again. When the Russian army decides that wolves must be destroyed, Feo’s mother is arrested, and Feo sets out across the frozen wilderness with a pack of wolves and a boy named Ilya to free her - and to carry a revolution with her.

It is the essential read for the epic: the novel is a fairy tale and a revolution story in one, and its portrait of the frozen forest is breathtaking. The book is entirely clean - the violence of the revolution is handled with restraint - and its heroine, Feo, is one of Rundell’s most memorable: fierce, loving and completely alive. The wolves are characters in their own right, and the book’s central argument - that wildness is not something to be tamed but something to be honored - is pure Rundell.

If You Want the Amazon Adventure: The Explorer#

The Explorer (2017)#

The novel that won the Costa Children’s Book Award and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award: four children - Fred, Con, Lila and Max - survive a plane crash in the Amazon rainforest and must find their way out. They are rescued, in a sense, by the forest itself: they learn to fish, to build, to navigate, and they discover the ruins of an ancient city - and the explorer who left it behind.

It is the essential read for the survival story: the novel is a hymn to the natural world - Rundell researched it in the Amazon - and its portrait of children learning to live in the forest is both thrilling and beautiful. The book is entirely clean, and its treatment of the relationship between the children and the indigenous people they meet is respectful and thoughtful. It is the perfect Rundell for readers who love adventure and nature.

If You Want the Historical Adventure: The Good Thieves#

The Good Thieves (2019)#

Rundell’s heist novel, set in 1920s New York: Vita Marlowe has come to America with her grandfather, who has been cheated out of his ancestral home by a ruthless businessman. Vita assembles a crew - a boy who can walk through walls, a girl who can climb anything, a boy who can pick any lock - and plans a heist to steal back what her family lost.

It is the essential read for the caper: the novel is a classic heist story with a child cast, and its setting - the rooftops and speakeasies of prohibition-era New York - is vividly drawn. The book is entirely clean, and its portrait of the friendships that make the heist possible is warm and moving. It is the most purely entertaining of Rundell’s novels.

If You Want the Nonfiction: The Unforgotten Coat and Impossible Creatures#

The Unforgotten Coat (2011)#

A short, intense novella about immigration and friendship: two Mongolian brothers arrive at a Liverpool school and befriend a boy named Rex, who is fascinated by their strange customs - the game they play with the coat, the photographs they carry. The novella is based on Rundell’s own experience of refugee children at her school, and it is one of the most moving books she has written.

It is the essential read for the depth: the novella is short - it can be read in an hour - but its portrait of childhood friendship across cultures is unforgettable. It is entirely clean, and it is the book Rundell herself has said she is proudest of.

Impossible Creatures (2023)#

Rundell’s most recent novel, which won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize: Christopher discovers a hidden world where mythical creatures - griffins, krakens, unicorns - are real, and he must join a girl named Mal to save the world from a mysterious dying. It is a return to the full imaginative adventure of her early novels, and it is entirely clean.

It is the essential read for the newest: the novel is a fantasy adventure in the great tradition - a bestiary of wonders, a race against time, and a portrait of friendship - and it confirms Rundell’s place at the front of modern children’s literature.

A Complete Reading Order for Rundell’s Wholesome Young Adult Fiction#

Here is a suggested path through Rundell’s best work:

• Start with Rooftoppers for the essential introduction.
• Move to The Wolf Wilder for the epic.
• Try The Explorer for the survival adventure.
• Read The Good Thieves for the caper.
• End with Impossible Creatures for the fantasy.

For more clean fiction in this spirit, our family-friendly clean books for teens list gathers young adult novels that are wholesome without being naive, and our family-friendly clean mystery books list extends the shelf into stories that are suspenseful without being graphic. The stories section of our site is full of guides like this one, so there is always another book to discover.

Why Rundell Writes with Such Joy#

Rundell’s books are built on a conviction that has become rare in children’s literature: that childhood is a time of glory. Her characters are not miniature adults with modern anxieties; they are children who run, climb, swim and explore, who take risks and learn from them, and who discover that the world is full of wonder worth fighting for. Rundell writes about the natural world - the Arctic, the Amazon, the rooftops of Paris - with the precision of someone who has actually been there, and her books give readers the sense that the world is bigger and stranger and more beautiful than they knew.

Her joy is not naive. Her characters face real danger, real loss and real fear - Feo’s mother is arrested, the explorer’s children have been orphaned by the crash - but Rundell’s books insist that courage and wonder are the right responses to danger, and that the world is worth loving even when it is hard. That insistence is the source of her books’ power, and it is why they are so beloved by children and adults alike.

Why Rundell Is the Essential Author for Joyful, Clean Adventure#

Katherine Rundell wrote some of the most beautiful children’s novels of her generation, and she did it without a single page a reader would need to skip. Rooftoppers is the essential introduction - a love letter to the possible; The Wolf Wilder and The Explorer are the epics; The Good Thieves is the caper; Impossible Creatures is the fantasy. Every one of them is entirely clean - adventurous without being graphic, joyful without being naive, and written with the precision of a poet. For readers and parents who want young adult fiction with wonder, wit and no content to skip, Rundell is the essential discovery - an author who believes in children completely, writes for them with total respect, and proves on every page that the cleanest books can also be the most glorious. Start with Sophie and the rooftoppers, and you will never ignore a possible again.