Daniel Pennac?

[St Carl]

Not sure if anyone's familiar with this french author but the guy is consistently within my top ten. I recently got back the books i'd left at home and immediately broke his out to read again.

To some extent you feel that something may be lost in the translation (and great work by the translator) but i do think they are work better with that little quirkiness behind them.

Best of the lot has to be The Fairy Gunmother

but pretty much anything else is darn good too.

Anyway if you're after something a little different to read i couldn't recommend Pennac enough. I think most of his stuff went out of print, but thankfully is available again.