books every child should read

[bedlamsbard]

Today's e-mail from ABE Books is 50 books every child should read. (They say 50 books every 11-year-old should read.) For our purposes, I shall list them, and bold the ones I've read. (I don't know if I read them when I was 11, though. Some of them I definitely was! But when I was 11 I was also reading Valdemar and Diana Gabaldon, which aren't on the list. Also, some of these books weren't out when I was 11.)



1. Swallows and Amazons (Arthur Ransome)
2. The Eagle of the Ninth (Rosemary Sutcliffe)
3. The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
4. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) -- I've read an abridged version, but not the original
5. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Roald Dahl)
6. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson-Burnett) -- I can't remember if I actually read the book, but I don't think I did
7. The Talking Parcel (Gerald Durrell)
8. War Horse (Michael Morpurgo)
9. The Beasts of Clawstone Castle (Eva Ibbotson) -- I've read a fair bit of Ibbotson, but not this one.
10. Danny the Champion of the World (Roald Dahl)
11. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
12. Artemis Fowl series (Eoin Colfer) -- I read almost all of them except for the last one, I think, when I lost my patience with Colfer
13. The City of Ember (Jeanne DuPrau)
14. Little House on the Prairie series (Laura Ingalls Wilder) -- not only did I read all the Little House on the Prairie books, I read all the other books Wilder wrote too
15. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)
16. The Machine Gunners (Robert Westall)
17. Because of Winn-Dixie (Kate DiCamillo) -- read it for school
18. Emil and the Detectives (Erich Kästner)
19. Inkheart (Cornelia Funke)
20. A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle) -- huh, why isn't the entire series on this list? I'd rate the Wrinkle in Time series over the Artemis Fowl series anyday.
21. The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)
22. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
23. Tom's Midnight Garden (Philippa Pearce)
24. The Book Thief (Marcus Zusak)
25. The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (Terry Pratchett)
26. Magic series (Edward Eager) -- the author's name is familiar, but I've never read the series. I'm not sure I've heard of the series, actually
27. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) -- read the entire series, and why isn't the whole series on this list? Is it because Anne grows up?
28. The Borrowers (Mary Norton) -- I've definitely heard of it, I can't remember if I read it or not.
29. Boy (Roald Dahl)
30. Holes (Louis Sachar)
31. The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman) -- read it, but given that it came out, like, two years ago, I definitely did not read it when I was eleven.
32. The Phoenix and the Carpet (E. Nesbit) -- I read some Nesbit book, but it wasn't this one.
33. The Lantern Bearers (Rosemary Sutcliffe)
34. The Silver Sword/Escape from Warsaw (Ian Serraillier)
35. Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
36. The Sheep-Pig (Dick King-Smith)
37. Bridge to Terebithia (Katherine Paterson)
38. The Dark is Rising series (Susan Cooper)
39. The Mozart Question (Michael Morpurgo)
40. The Pendragon Adventure series (D.J. MacHale)
41. Percy Jackson & the Olympians series (Rick Riordan)
42. Silverwing (Kenneth Oppel)
43. The Spiderwick Chronicles (Tony DiTerlizzi & Holly Black)
44. Stig of the Dump (Clive King)
45. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Alan Garner)
46. The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis) -- I know it will come as a huge shock that I have read these. Try and hold your surprise
47. His Dark Materials trilogy (Philip Pullman)
48. The Harry Potter books (J.K. Rowling)
49. Leven Thumps series (Obert Skye)
50. A Series of Unfortunate Events series (Lemony Snickett) -- read some of them, got bored

*looks up* You know, I have several flaws with this list. To begin with, Diana Wynne Jones is nowhere on this list, nor are the Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys books. Also, there are a huge number of books I've never heard of, which is probably my fault, or my parents' fault, or my schools' fault, but you know, whatever. And some of the books on here are books in series, but they only list the first book, not the whole series, but there are other series on here. And Black Beauty isn't on this list! That surprises me. Nor is Mary Stewart, or Robin McKinley -- I wouldn't count all McKinley books, but definitely The Blue Sword should be. But that's just me.

I'm really pleased Swallows and Amazons is first on the list, though. Huh, looking back at the webpage, it has The Phantom Tollbooth and the Redwall series both up, but not as part of the actual list. Wait, does that article actually say that some of these books are better for one sex than the other? (I mean, granted, I don't know many boys who grew up reading Anne of Green Gables, but still.)

*counts* Huh, I've really only read 19 of these? Wow, I thought it would be more...although my tastes clearly differ slightly from the OP.