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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