Essential Reading List

My friend Tiffany's going to be teaching a class on Children's Lit at San Jose State University. We've been chatting back and forth about essential books in this genre, and I came up with my list. I thought I'd share it here on the blog.



Picture Books (0-8 ish)--Mercer Mayer (One Monster After Another or Liza Lou and the Yellerbelly Swamp), Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are), Margaret Wise Brown (Good Night, Moon), Shel Silverstein (The Giving Tree), Dr. Seuss (Any).



Early Reader (5-9 ish)--Arnold Lobel (Frog and Toad books), AA Milne (Winnie the Pooh books), Jean de Brunhoff (Babar books), Antoine de Saint-Exupery (the Little Prince), Judy Blume (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing), Louise Fitzhugh (Harriet the Spy), EL Konigsburg (From the Mixed-Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler).



Middle Grade (middle schoolers)--Ellen Raskin (The Westing Game and The Tattooed Potato), Lois Lowry (The Giver), Madeliene L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time), Jeanne DuPrau (City of Ember), Ursula K. LeGuinn (The Earthsea Trilogy and The Beginning Place), CS Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia).



Young Adult (high schoolers)--JD Salinger (Catcher in the Rye), Ellen Hopkins (Crank), MT Anderson (Feed)



Then, you also have the classics in children's lit, which don't fall so neatly into the categories: Charlotte's Web, Treasure Island, Huckleberry Finn/Tom Sawyer, Little Women, Heidi, The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, The Wizard of Oz, anything by Roald Dahl, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling, Beatrix Potter, Dr. Seuss, and of course, JK Rowling and Lemony Snicket. Some might also say Hawthorne and Cooper and Tolkein might be considered in this category.



Books I haven't read, but are classics: Bud, Not Buddy; The Phantom Toll Booth, Walk Two Moons, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Uncle Tom's Cabin, To Kill a Mockingbird, I Know Where the Red Fern Grows. Some new classics I haven't read: Luis Sachar (Holes), the Alex Rider series.