I was slightly too old actually to read Pike, but I remember seeing it in the library.
For E you might also consider Vernon's Harriet Hamsterbone stories, which are not strictly ensemble and feature Harriet as protag, sometimes rather cynically but always with heart, IMO. I mean--kids will read what they want and not necessarily what is suggested to them, but Reason folds in some things (and then for others, while we're still at the library, she shakes her head and I reshelve the book). Anyway, whereas the Danny books have splinters you'd recognize, each Harriet book rewrites something, rather as Vernon's books for adults as T. Kingfisher do (or so I glean from synopses--I own copies of two but haven't read them yet).
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For E you might also consider Vernon's Harriet Hamsterbone stories, which are not strictly ensemble and feature Harriet as protag, sometimes rather cynically but always with heart, IMO. I mean--kids will read what they want and not necessarily what is suggested to them, but Reason folds in some things (and then for others, while we're still at the library, she shakes her head and I reshelve the book). Anyway, whereas the Danny books have splinters you'd recognize, each Harriet book rewrites something, rather as Vernon's books for adults as T. Kingfisher do (or so I glean from synopses--I own copies of two but haven't read them yet).