Sunday, August 25, 2013

Historic reading besties!

      Well. My wonderful papa gave me something pretty special:
     It is a newspaper clipping he found from his pack rat historic archives; a suggested reading list created by the famous William J. Bennet and published in 1988 by the associated press! In case your clueless, Bennet was the national secretary of education during the Reagan administration - a very influential man. ( okay, I admit I have wikipedia to thank...)
   Anyways. This list is thorough, clean, and educational. After looking it over a couple times I see many books I've read and enjoyed, and quite a few I haven't touched yet. Who knows, maybe I'll work my way through it and make  a better annotated list with reviews, links, and pictures. Although there are definitely some classics I would add ( plus a couple boring ones I would subtract), I feel this is one of the best, most complete book lists I've ever found– at least as far as introducing classic lit to children is concerned. Plus, after minimal research I have concluded it has not yet been posted on the wide world of the web ( and how often does that happen?). So I shall happily share this rather special treasure with you.

Suggested Reading List for Young Eyes

William J. Bennet 
November 22nd 1988 

Kindergarden - 3rd grade: 


Behind the Back of the Mountain: Black Folktales from Southern Africa
Verna Aardema

Aesop for Children

Hans Christian Anderson's Fairytales

Wiley and the Hairy Man - Molly Bang

Once in Puerto Rico - Pura Belpre

Madeline books - Ludwig Bemelmans

The Three Billy Goats Gruff  - Susan Blair

The Pied Piper of Hamelin - Robert Browning

The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant - Jean de Brunhoff

The Ramona and Henry Huggins series - Beverly Clearly

Adventures of Pinocchio - Carlo Collodi

The Courage of Sarah Noble - Alice Daigliesh

Book of Nursery and Mother Goose Rhymes - Marguerite De Angeli

The Whipping Boy - Sid Fleischman

The Three Bears - Paul Galdone

Grimm's Fairy Tales -

The Wonder Book - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Little Red Riding Hood - Trina Schart Hyman

John Henry: an American Legend - Ezra Jack Keats

The Snowy Day - Ezra Jack Keats

Just So Stories - Rudyard Kipling

The Arabian Nights and Alladdin and The Wonderful Lamp - Andrew Lang

Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lindgren

Frog and Toad Together - Arnold Lobel

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle - Betty MacDonald

Make way for the Ducklings -
and
Blueberries for Sal - Robert Mccloskey

Winnie The Pooh - A. A. Milne

Amelia Bedelia - Peggy Parish

Cinderella - Charles Perrault

The Tale of Peter Rabbit - Beatrix Potter

Clementine - Robert Quackenbush

Curious George - H. A. Rey

Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak

The Cat in the Hat - Dr. Seuss

Noah's Ark - Peter Spier

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble - William Steig

A Child's Garden of Verses - Robert Louis Stevenson

Brian Wildsmith's Illustrated Bible Stories - Philip Turner

The Velveteen Rabbit - Margery Williams

Little House books - Laura Ingalls Wilder

Rumpelstiltskin - Paul O. Zelinsky

Charlotte's Web - E.B. White

 
For children grades 4-6 

Born Free - Joy Adamson

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

Sounder - William H. Armstrong

Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

The Black Stallion - Walter Farley

Great Brain Books - John D. Fitzgerald

Johnny Tremain - Esther Forbes

Selections from Poor Richards Almanac - Benjamin Franklin

Lincoln: A Photobiography - Russel Freedman

And Then What Happened Paul Revere - Jean Fritz

A Swinger of Birches: Poems of Robert Frost for Young People

The Wind in the WIllows - Kenneth Grahame

Mythology - Edith Hamilton

The People Who Could Fly: American Black Folktales - Virginia Hamilton

Misty of Chincoteague - Marguerite Henry

The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster

The Jungle Book
Captain Courageous   - Rudyard Kipling

Lassie Come Home - Eric Knight

Tales from Shakespeare - Charles and Mary Lamb

The Rainbow Fairybooks - Andrew Lang

A Wrinkle in Time - Madeline De'Engle

The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis

The Call of the Wild - Jack London

Paul Bunyan Swings His Ax - Dell J. McCormick

Bridge To Terebithia
The Great Gilly Hopkins - Katherine Paterson

Tales and Mystery and IMagination - Edgar Allen Poe

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood - Howard Pyle

Bambi - Felix Salten

Rootabaga Stories
Abe Lincoln Grows Up - Carl Sandburg

Black Beauty - Anna Sewell

A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw - Isaac Bashevis Singer

Heidi - Johanna Spyri

Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson

The Nutcracker: a Story and Ballet - Ellen Switzer

What's the Big Idea Ben Franklin? - Margot Tomes

Swiss Family Robinson - Johanna Wyss


For Grades 7-8 

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane

Madam Curie: A Biography - Eve Curie

Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

I'm Nobody Who are you - Emily Dickinson

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

The Count of Monte Cristo
The Three Musketeers - Alexander Dumas

Washington: The Indispensable Man - James Thomas Flexner

Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank

A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry

The House of Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

The Gift of the Magi and other Short Stories - O Henry

Kon-Tiki - Thor Heyerdahl

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Wrinkle - Washington Irving

Story of My Life - Helen Keller

Kim - Rudyard Kipling

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Mutiny on the Bounty - Charles Nordoff and JN Hall

The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Emma Orzcy

The Complete Tales of Edgar Allen Poe

The Chosen - Chaim Potok

The Yearling - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott

Plays and Sonnets - William Shakespeare

Frankenstein - Mary Shelly

The Red Pony -
The Pearl              John Steinbeck

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain

20,000 leagues under the sea - Jules Verne

Up from Slavery - Booker T. Washington

The Time Machine - H. G. Wells

Ehan Frome - Edith Wharton

The Sword and the Stone - T.H. White

The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder

The Virginian - Owen Wister


    And there you have it. A historic list of classics I am going to make sure all my future kids/students work there way through.




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