Not-So-Impossible Tales Books in Order

The Not-So-Impossible Tales are highly illustrated, stand-alone adventures by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre. They share a bright, comic spirit and a universe where ordinary children can stumble into islands with wigs, spaceships full of cakes, snowy dog races, or a moon-sized funfair.

Normal is not really an option here.

In Oliver and the Seawigs, a boy named Oliver sets off to find his missing explorer parents and encounters talking islands disguised by elaborate wigs. Cakes in Space follows Astra, who wakes from a long space voyage to find that the ship's cakes have become a genuine problem. The books are strange in the most cheerful way, but both put a resourceful child at the center of the action.

Pugs of the Frozen North turns a search for a lost grandfather into a race across a snowy landscape with a large pack of very enthusiastic pugs. Jinks and O'Hare Funfair Repair follows Emily, who lives on Funfair Moon and longs to work with its repair team. When an inspection coincides with one malfunction after another, she has a chance to prove what she can do.

The stories are not one long plot, so readers can dip in anywhere. Still, Oliver and the Seawigs is a natural first choice because it introduces the playful tone and the mix of prose, drawings, signs, diagrams, and visual gags that define the books.

Sarah McIntyre's illustrations are part of the storytelling, not just decoration. They speed up jokes, show the odd details of each setting, and make the books welcoming for readers moving from illustrated chapter books to longer novels.

Expect fast pacing, friendly weirdness, brave children, and problems that are often much larger than they first appear. The stakes can be real, but the series always has time for a ridiculous creature, a bad pun, or an unexpected snack.