Russell Hoban

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Russell Hoban's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    55 Books (1 Series)
  • First Book:
    June 1960
  • Latest Book:
    February 2018
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Full Series List in Order

Frances

Bedtime for Frances (Jun-1960)
Bread and Jam for Frances (Feb-1964)
A Baby Sister for Frances (Jun-1964)
A Birthday for Frances (Sep-1968)
Best Friends for Frances (Sep-1969)
A Bargain for Frances (Oct-1970)

Book List in Order: 55 titles

  • Bedtime for Frances

    Frances

    "

    This beloved classic bedtime book continues to spark giggles and is a perfect read-aloud at bedtime.

    It may be bedtime for Frances, but before Frances can sleep, she needs a glass of milk, a kiss from Father, one from Mother, her teddy bear...

  • Bread and Jam for Frances

    Frances
    I Can Read: Level 2

    Frances is a fussy eater. In fact, the only thing she likes is bread and jam. She won't touch her squishy soft-boiled egg. She trades away her chicken-salad sandwich at lunch. She turns up her nose at boring veal cutlets. Unless Mother can come up...

  • A Baby Sister for Frances

    Frances
    I Can Read: Level 2

    Frances's new baby sister seems to have everyone's attention. No one has time for Frances, until one day she decides to do something about it.

    "Well," said Frances, "things are not very good around here anymore. No clothes to wear. No raisin...

  • Henry and the Monstrous Din

  • A Birthday for Frances

    Frances
    I Can Read: Level 2

    Gloria''s birthday is tomorrow, and everyone is looking forward to the celebration—except Frances. Frances can''t help but think that it always seems to be someone else''s birthday. To make matters worse, Gloria''s birthday present costs Fra...

  • Best Friends for Frances

    Frances
    I Can Read: Level 2

    Frances doesn't think her younger sister Gloria can be her friend. Gloria is too small to throw or catch a ball. Besides, Albert is Frances's friend. But when Albert has a no-girls baseball game, Frances sets out to prove to Albert a thing or two ...

  • A Bargain for Frances

    Frances
    I Can Read: Level 2

    One day Thelma tricks Frances into buying her old plastic tea set. Thelma says there are no backsies on the bargain. Can Frances come up with a plan that will change her friend's mind?

    Outstanding Children's Books of 1970 (NYT)...

  • Letitia Rabbits String Song

  • Kleinzeit

    On a day like any other, Kleinzeit gets fired. Hours later, he finds himself in hospital with a pair of adventurous pyjamas and a recurring geometrical pain. Here, he falls instantly in love with a beautiful night nurse called Sister. And together th...



  • Turtle Diary

    Two lonely Londoners bond over a plan to free the sea turtles at the city zoo in this touching novel from a cult-favorite author who has drawn comparisons to J.D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut. A wise and touching classic that “crackles with witty d...

  • The Mole Family's Christmas

  • Dinner at Alberta's

  • They Came from Aargh!

  • Riddley Walker

    • / Science Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    Written in an idiosyncratic yet authentic voice, an ingenious account describes Riddley Walker's attempt to understand the past and the present of a world which continues to exist two thousand years after the ultimate catastrophe occurred...

  • The Great Gum Drop Robbery

  • The Flight of Bembel Rudzuk

  • The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

    "Jachin-Boaz is a maker and seller of maps. In his shop are maps that will lead you to whatever it is you most desire: love, inspiration, wealth. But his greatest achievement is a master-map showing the location of everything that has ever been found...

  • Pilgermann

    "After Pilgermann, a German Jew in the year 1096, ravishes the tax collector's wife, an angry Christian mob retaliates by brutally castrating him. Bleeding and left for dead, Pilgermann experiences a vision of Jesus Christ and resolves to set out on ...

  • Big John Turkle

    Believing that the other creatures of the pond are laughing at him, Big John Turkle takes a willow-pattern cup handle belonging to Grover Crown when he goes down under the mud to hibernate for the winter...



  • Monsters

  • Jim Hedgehog and the Lonesome Tower

  • The Stone Doll of Sister Brute

  • Little Brute Family

    "

    A favorite story from Lillian and Russell Hoban, creators of the classic Frances books, The Little Brute Family is repackaged in a brand-new format for beginning readers.

    They eat sand and gravel for breakfast and a stew of sticks and st...

  • Egg Thoughts and Other Frances Songs

  • The Trokeville Way

    The revered author of books for all ages, from Bread and Jam for Frances to Turtle Diary, gives the literary performance of a lifetime in this taut psychological thriller about a boy who tries desperately to stop failing. Things are already looking a...

  • Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition

    "A hero with Huck Finn's heart and charm, lighting by El Greco and jokes by Punch and Judy. . . . Riddley Walker is haunting and fiercely imagined and -- this matters most -- intensely ponderable." -- Benjamin DeMott, The New York Times Book Review"...

  • Fremder

    Fourth Galaxy, 4 November 2052: in the black sparkle of deep space a figure in a blue overall tumbles over and over as it drifts towards the planet Badr-al-Budur. No space suit, no helmet, no oxygen. He can't be alive, can he? But he is. First Naviga...

  • The Sea-Thing Child

    Washed upon the beach one evening, a frightened and shaken sea-thing child is fearful of returning to the ocean, yet with the help of the new friends he meets along the way, he gains confidence in himself once again and returns to the waters he knows...

  • A Russell Hoban Omnibus

    Author of the immensely popular children’s books featuring Frances the Badger, Russell Hoban is also a master of contemporary imaginative literary forms, including the cult classic Riddley Walker.

    Gathered here are four of Mr. Hoban’s no...



  • Trouble on Thunder Mountain

  • Angelica's Grotto

    Angelica's Grotto is a pornographic website into which seventy-two-year-old art historian Harold Klein wanders one evening. Klein, a walking catalogue of infirmities, known to medical consultants as 'he who declines to hop the twig', may not be up to...

  • Amaryllis Night and Day

    The first time Peter Diggs saw Amaryllis she was at a bus stop where the street sign said Balsamic, although there was nothing vinegary about the place. The bus was unthinkably tall, made of yellow, orange and pink rice paper, lit from within like a ...

  • The Medusa Frequency

    An inexplicable message flashed onto the screen of his Apple II computer at 3 a.m. heralds the beginning of a startling quest for frustrated author Herman Orff. Taking up the offer of a cure for writer's block leads him 'to those places in your head ...

  • Mr. Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

    Jonathan Fitch was shocked by Mr. Rinyo-Clacton's offer a million pounds and one year to live, but what happened next was even more shocking. In a state of desperation after being left by beautiful Serafina, Jonathan does his best to pull up his sock...

  • Bat Tattoo

    Recently widowed and increasingly lonely, Roswell Clark's life had arrived at the point when he felt he needed a tattoo. His ideal image was that of a bat featured on an eighteenth-century bowl in the Victoria and Albert Museum, but strangely, on a v...

  • Her Name Was Lola

    'This is it ...this is my destiny woman,' Max blurted out when he first met Lola at the Coliseum shop. Not only was she aristocratic and wild at heart, but the two discovered an uncanny convergence of musical tastes. Soon they were converging at ever...

  • Come Dance with Me

    There is a strangeness about Christabel Alderton. Elias Newman can see it right away, as well he might.

    When Christabel was 13 she was walking by the River Lea and some people in a cabin cruiser waved to her. The scene before her seeme...

  • Linger Awhile

    "

    Irving Goodman, self-confessed dirty old man, is 83 years old and has just fallen in love. Unfortunately, Justine Trimble, star of 1950s cowboy B-movies, has been dead for 47 years. He saw her first in ""Last Stage to El Paso"", a lowlife black-a...

  • How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen

    Tom is so good at fooling around that he does little else. His Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong, who thinks this is too much like having fun, calls upon the fearsome Captain Najork and his hired sportsmen to teach him a lesson. So the Captain challenges To...



  • A Near Thing for Captain Najork

    Tom is happy with his new Aunt Bundlejoy Cosysweet who is delighted to be asked to join him in his latest invention, a jam-powered frog. When the frog hops past Captain Najork's window Tom does not expect to be chased by a pedal powered snake, comple...

  • My Tango with Barbara Strozzi

    Recently separated Phil Ockerman falls hard for Bertha Strunk at a tango lesson in Clerkenwell. Bertha also bears a strong resemblance to the seventeenth-century Venetian singer and composer Barbara Strozzi (with whom Phil happens to be obsessed), to...

  • The Sorely Trying Day

    Father has had a long hard day at work. A sorely trying day indeed. He wants to sit down and put his feet up and rest. But what does he find when he arrives home? Commotion, consternation, confusion, chaos rule! How to get to the bottom of it? How to...

  • The Messiaen Companion

    Re-issued to coincide with the centenary of Messiaen's birth, The Messiaen Companion was the first major study to appear after the composer's death in April 1992. It was the first book to offer both a complete survey of Messiaen's extraordinary achie...

  • Soonchild

    Two internationally acclaimed artists create a groundbreaking, genre-defying adventure to transcend time, place, and identity. In the cold north where the white wind blows lives Sixteen-Face John, a shaman. His wife is expecting their first child ...

  • Rosie's Magic Horse

    If an ice-pop stick can dream of being a horse, what magic might follow? A fanciful tale by Russell Hoban, mischievously illustrated by Quentin Blake. Once its icy sweetness is gone, a discarded ice-pop stick is lonely until young Rosie comes by a...

  • Jim's Lion

    Russell Hoban’s moving, unflinching tale of a boy who finds bravery during illness is reimagined in graphic-novel format with new art by Alexis Deacon. Asleep in his hospital bed, Jim dreams of a great lion with white teeth and amber eyes. This ...

  • Ace Dragon Ltd

    From renowned picture book creators Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake, the story of Ace Dragon LTD. -- who isn’t so limited after all. When John notices a manhole cover with the words ACE DRAGON LTD. written across it, he can't help but investig...

  • The Twenty-Elephant Restaurant

  • Charlie the Tramp

    Charlie the Beaver wants to be a tramp when he grows up. “Tramps don’t have to learn how to chop down trees and how to roll logs and how to build dams. Tramps just tramp around and have a good time. Tramps carry sticks with little bundles tied to...



  • The Marzipan Pig

    Who but Russell Hoban could weave a tale of life’s pleasures and pain around a candy pig? And who but Quentin Blake could make the most poignant of stories so lighthearted and delightful? In this episodic picture book by an inimitable author-illust...

  • Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas

    The inspiration for the beloved Jim Henson film is back in print after over 40 years. In 1977, when Jim Henson debuted the now-classic film Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, few knew it was based on a story written and illustrated by Russell a...

  • Harvey's Hideout

    For big sisters and little brothers in dens, burrows, and houses everywhere.

    “Mildred,” said Father Muskrat, “it is true that Harvey is selfish and inconsiderate, but he is not stupid and no-good. Mildred is loudmouthed and bossy,” Fat...

  • Angelica Lost and Found

    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    In Ariosto's epic sixteenth century poem Orlando Furioso, the
    beautiful Angelica is rescued by the valiant Ruggiero. He swoops in
    riding a hippogriff, a fantastical winged creature, the offspring of a
    griffin and a mare. Volatore, ...

  • The Frances Collection

    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    Readers first fell in love with Frances over forty years ago and have been faithful fans ever since. Whether she is eating nothing but jam and bread for every meal, or generously giving a coveted present to her sister, Frances never fails to entertai...

  • The Mouse and His Child

    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    "Like the fantasies of Tolkien, Thurber, E. B. White, The Mouse and His Child is filled with symbolism and satire, violence and vengeance, tears and laughter." -- The New York TimesThe images stay with you long after the book is done: the toy mouse a...

Award-Winning Books by Russell Hoban

Bread and Jam for Frances
2013 E.B. White Read Aloud Award -- Picture Bk Hall of Fame
Riddley Walker
1982 John W. Campbell Memorial Award -- Novel


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Russell Hoban has published 55 books.

Russell Hoban does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Harvey's Hideout, was published in February 2018.

The first book by Russell Hoban, Bedtime for Frances, was published in June 1960.

Yes. Russell Hoban has 1 series.
Author Series
Publisher Series
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