50 Books Every Child Should Read meme

[wellinghall]

pellegrina made this up! Books selected for The Independent by Philip Pullman, Michael Morpurgo, Katy Guest, John Walsh, Michael Rosen. Meme rules: Bold those you read as aged 0-18, italicise those you read aged 19-now, underline those you started but didn't finish, strikethrough those you have never even heard of. Add remarks if you feel like it.


* Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.
* Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi.
* Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner.
* Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome.
* Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken.
* The Owl Service by Alan Garner.
* The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. My elder cousins' copy.
* Moominsummer Madness by Tove Jansson. Or at least some of the Moomin books, anyway.
* A Hundred Million Francs by Paul Berna.
* The Castafiore Emerald by Hergé.
* The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson
* A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
* Just William books by Richmal Crompton. Many, but not all.
* The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde.
* The Elephant's Child From The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.
* Treasure Island by R.L. Stevenson.
* The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Or rather, had it read to us in English class at school.
* The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono.
* The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy.
* The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson-Burnett.
* Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah.
* Finn Family Moomintroll (and the other Moomin books) by Tove Jansson. Some of them.
* Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney.
* I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.
* The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein (sic). Well duh.
* The Tygrine Cat (and The Tygrine Cat on the Run) by Inbali Iserles.
* Carry On, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse.
* When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr.
* Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett.
* The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson.
* The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
* The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.
* Mistress Masham's Repose by TH White.
* Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. No, but I have read Little Men.
* How to be Topp by Geoffrey Willams and Ronald Searle.
* Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz.
* Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo.
* Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer. It gave me nightmares. (Um, this was meant to be underlined, but I clearly don't know how to do it).
* The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier.
* Animal Farm by George Orwell. What's this doing on a list of children's books?
* Skellig by David Almond.
* Red Cherry Red by Jackie Kay.
* Talkin Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah.
* Greek myths by Geraldine McCaughrean.
* People Might Hear You by Robin Klein.
* Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman.
* Einstein's Underpants and How They Saved the World by Anthony McGowan.
* After the First Death by Robert Cormier.
* The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd.
* Beano Annual. Some of them.

Caveat: I have been reading for about forty years now, and I can't pretend to remember all the books I've ever read, or just when I read them. (NB English needs a way of distinguishing between the tenses of the verb "to read").

Comments

[bouncy-elf.livejournal.com]

Why is their no Enid Blyton or Rosemary Sutcliff on this list?!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

As a child, I lived off Enid Blyton, with smaller amounts of Jennings, Biggles and Just William. And plenty of others.

[bouncy-elf.livejournal.com]

I didn't like Enid Blyton, but was made to read her as a child. I might appreciate her more now. I was always a Nesbit and Hodgson- Burnett fan :) And my mum read me Sutcliff..

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Because Sutcliff isn't trendy enough and Blyton is officially Bad and cannot be recommended by right-thinking people.

At least the plague/nuclear holocaust/generic apocalypse genre seems to have dropped out of official approval.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

No W E Johns either. Or E Nesbit, C S Lewis, J K Rowling (or Stephanie Meyer). Or Clarke/Azimov/Heinlein (or much 'young adult' SF/Fantasy). Or Neil Gaiman...

But these are books kids should read - rather than books they can find for themselves and actually enjoy.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Or Anthony Buckeridge.

[widsidh.livejournal.com]

Some of these only came out longe after I stopped being a child!

I agree with comments made above on the absence of Blyton and Sutcliff - my devouring of the former was frowned upon, but my love the latter far outlived my childhood.