I own all of those They are indeed great books. My younger ones don't want to hear those either though. The plots just are too complicated and the books are too long. They prefer "My Father's Dragon"- and the two books which follow that, and the OZ books, and things like that. They did enjoy the Little Prince- and I wasn't sure they would. And we read a great book called Silverwing that was very well recieved- it is a story of a brave little greywing bat. Very nice story.