This will probably work best if it is a kid that belongs to you in some official capacity; you will need to begin a campaign of supervised book-giving at an early age, and it’s most easily managed if you’re able to do so while under the same roof. This should result in a pretty good person. If it doesn’t, give me a call and we can discuss where you went wrong.
Age Three — The Little Fur Family. Every child should have a little furry book. Be sure to get the version with the soft, furry cover; that’s very important. It is a perfect book and you can sleep with it right next to your head, if you are small enough, which a three-year-old ought to be.
Age Four — Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear? This book will be very helpful if your child grows up to be an anxious person or suffer from sleep paralysis or becomes the kind of person who has to watch Netflix on a laptop balanced on their stomach until they are gently and deliriously lulled into passing out rather than falling asleep. There are so many reasons not to want to fall asleep.
Age Five — Betsy-Tacy and Catwings. Catwings because it is never too early to introduce a child to the works of Ursula K. Leguin, who I did not realize wrote Catwings until yesterday. It is about shifting for yourself and avoiding owls, which are two life lessons worth learning at any age. Betsy-Tacy because they are charming and Midwestern and about best friends and will eventually instill within said child the love for tolerance, the Edwardian era, emotional restraint and Episcopalianism that is necessary for a semester abroad at Oxford. (It will also prepare them to love Maurice, E.M. Forster’s greatest novel, in exactly fifteen years.)
Age Six — The Blue Fairy Book. The other colors can come in whatever order you prefer, but The Blue Fairy Book must come first. They’re going to read Anne Sexton someday, there is nothing you can do to prevent it, but you might as well give them something solid to come back to once they tire themselves out. You might as well throw in Kipling’s Just So Stories while you’re at it, although this may instill in her a degree of affectation so monstrous that she refers to her first love interest as “The Best Beloved” for absolutely years. But that isn’t Kipling’s fault. Plenty of other things are Kipling’s fault, but you can get to those later when you think she’s ready to talk about Gunga Din critically.
Age Seven — Bulfinch’s Mythology. You should already have started them on the big, gorgeous D’aulaire’s illustrated version, but they’re ready for the real thing now. You can rage against the canon all you like on your own time, but it’s got to be Bulfinch and it’s got to be now, and you’ve got to pay just as much attention to the boring Charlemagne cycle as you do to the transformation of Daphne.
Age Eight — The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Illustrated Bible (Nestor Redondo version only, please). Moreau because you have to build a person up to Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson; you can’t just spring them on a body at fourteen and expect to leave a whole and sane person in your wake. The Illustrated Bible because I don’t care what kind of whacked-out UU church you’ve got your kid attending thrice a solstice or whatever, if they can’t recite the basic plot elements of the tale of Job or find the throbbing poignancy of Leah’s discovery in the unlit tent before they reach double digits, you’ve got yourself a worthless kid. (No, your kid is great.) But if your kid reads East of Eden without having gone through the Book of Genesis at least forty times first, their souls will never fully heal
Plus drawings are just cool.
Age Nine — The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales. I told you already. Drawings are amazing. And you need to make sure they remain at least a little convinced that human beings are capable of flight under the right circumstances until they reach puberty.
Age Ten – Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Get this in before they have to read To Kill A Mockingbird freshman year. Ask Jaya if you don’t believe me.
Age Eleven — The Wonderful Flight To The Mushroom Planet. There is no science fiction like 1950s-era science fiction for children. Make sure the child reads this, and he or she will be a completely appropriate degree of odd for the rest of his or her life. May be replaced with The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles if your kid’s a little bit of a wuss. Anything written about space travel shortly before space travel actually became possible will do, however. The important thing is to keep it weird. Not “tapes her ears into elvish points for the entirety of sophomore year” weird, but one or two tiers below. Think “nourishes a healthy appreciation for the works of Jules Verne,” not “regularly attends steampunk conventions.”
Age Twelve — Jeeves. Twelve is the perfect age for Jeeves. No older, no younger, no matter how precocious you believe this particular child to be. Twelve is just the right age to imprint on Wodehouse, and you always start Wodehouse with Jeeves. Psmith is for fourteen. Mr. Mulliner and Lord Emsworth can wait until college. Twelve is for Jeeves. Start with The Inimitable Jeeves. Make sure you get one with the cover featured to the right, because some of the Jeeves covers are terrible.
You will be tempted to begin with Right Ho, Jeeves! because of the Market Snodsbury prize-giving speech, but this is an error. Do not fall into it. Start with The Inimitable Jeeves, and the rest will follow. Do not buy her a Jeeves omnibus; the spine is too thick and makes it impossible to read in the shower.
Twelve is also an appropriate age to instill in her a deep inner conviction that no matter how strong her appreciation for the collected works of Wodehouse, she must never refer to him as “The Master.” If she does, all is lost. You have created an unlovable pedant.
This is also a good age to get her started on the Berdichever, if her understanding of Heschel is good. But she must love Heschel before she is ready for the Berdichever. If you cannot bring her to love Heschel, you must begin again from scratch. Start with Rumi, maybe.
Age Thirteen — Ivanhoe and The Once and Future King. Do not worry about flinging Anne of Green Gables or A Wrinkle In Time at her; by this age she will have absorbed them by osmosis. She may also at this point have absorbed in passing a smutty book. This can be easily countered by the administering of at least one entry in the X-Wing series of the Star Wars Expanded Universe canon. The Once and Future King should be easy enough, but persist in proffering Ivanhoe until they accept. Ivanhoe will counteract all the petty, countless indignities of being thirteen.
Age Fourteen — Good Omens and Tam Lin. In order to understand Good Omens, she will need to be at least passingly familiar with the works of G.K. Chesterton (if you don’t understand the dedication, you’re not ready for the rest of the book). Just Orthodoxy is fine if you don’t have time for The Man Who Was Thursday. If she has the ‘we have sinned and grown old, but our Father is younger than we‘ part memorized, she may be permitted to skip the works of C.S. Lewis entirely.
Good Omens is mandatory if one hopes to develop in the child a sense of humor. The fact that it will never — never — successfully be made into a movie will teach her a sense of whimsy and resignation not unbecoming to a young person. Tam Lin may be omitted if she displays a tendency to want to read the works of Marion Zimmer Bradley.
Age Fifteen — Shirley Jackson. It is imperative she not be allowed to read any Jane Austen at this point. Do not allow even the name of Jane Austen to be breathed in the walls of your home. Stop all the clocks, strike out any mention of her works in the newspapers and periodicals that cross your threshold. Should she discover Austen now, she will be lost to you forever. Shirley Jackson and Shirley Jackson alone can save her at this age. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is best — preferably if she can stumble upon it by herself in a used bookstore on a summer afternoon, since this will be the last year she doesn’t have to get a summer job — but The Lottery will do fine. Shirley Jackson before Dorothy Parker, remember.
Now it is too late for you to influence any of her reading choices; now you have lost her. Hope for the best and wait for her to call you in a few years. If you have laid the appropriate groundwork, the call will come sooner rather than later, and you will find her surprisingly pleasant to talk to.*
*Not a guarantee
Tags: books, feeling less alone through literature, kids, parenting advice from an idiot who lives alone, train the child up in the way that he should go
WHO ON EARTH DOESN’T HAVE TIME FOR THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY???
Me. I don’t have time for Chesterton in general.
I hope you like missing out on the most sympathetic Christian writing on earth, I guess!
I found him off-putting and smug! :shrug:
My husband just gave me the complete Father Brown for an early birthday present and I am wallowing in barely-cloaked philosophy and luxurious, over-the-top prose about London.
I would like a “when to give an adult a book” list, please.
Austen feels so inevitable – what age is safe??
as soon as she/he understands subtle but really quite biting sarcasm. (Poor Jane, what a fate for a writer to be completely misunderstood by her biggest fans).
Two serious adult relationships had to end badly before I started getting the jokes. (And then you have that wonderful/awful discovery that the book you thought you had been reading was actually a completely different book all along.)
Exactly – that’s why they are perfect for teenagers! Teenagers are snide and sarcastic and love the idea that the world is comprised of clever awesome folk who Get It and silly shallow losers who Don’t Get It.
Or is that why we should keep them away from teenagers, hm.
Yeah, I was a very sarcastic kid but didn’t realize that Literature with a capital L could also be sarcastic and therefore reading “Pride and Prejudice” in 8th grade was largely a wasted effort. But when I revisited it in late high school, it was a-may-zing.
Austen is for adult minds. Over 18, I think
Yes, Austen was nothing to me (earnest, awful, teen me) until junior year of college. Luckily, I escaped all the Brontes in high school and so came to them at the proper time (also junior year of college).
After she has read the horror-mashups first, which should come soon after Shirley Jackson.
Thirty-five.
Mallory is coming to stay with me in March for a long Official Toast Retreat, and I kind of want to film her reading one of her creepy-ass children’s stories to my toddler, with my toddler’s face obscured with a mask for a) privacy and b) maximum creep factor.
Frankly, I think you should record Mallory reading her creepy-ass children’s stories and produce the collected recordings as “Bedtime Stories for Never Sleeping Ever” or something. Sell as Toast merch. Become millionaires.
Would Mallory consider doing readings of I Want My Hat Back and This Is Not My Hat? I give both of these books to parents of small children as my standard gift, and they seem so innocent and sweet with all the animals and all the hats and then, whammo, dark and twisted funny endings, which are the best!
Misandrist lullabies please!
In the phrase “creepy-ass children’s stories”, does ‘creepy-ass’ modify ‘children’ or ‘stories’? If the latter, it sounds like the tale of some kind of mobile buttocks. If the former, what is needed is a good juvenile proctologist. Either way i’d keep Mallory away from your toddler.
DADDDDDD
Oh god, I absolutely do not want children but this is calling to me in an extremely weird RPG-level-building, class-progression kind of way.
I just kind of want a child to appear on my doorstep so that I can take her in and mold her in my image.
Find a friend or relative with children, and pick one as your own to train. Clearly, the parent will maintain the caregiving part, but you get to mold her little mind as you see fit. It’s working for me at any rate.
aka The Cool Aunt Gambit. (It is my calling.)
I love it. Not one week goes by without an “AuntieLyzz! I wanna go on an ADVENTURE!” And then I return the child lightly sugared up and tired and hopefully a little more learned, and go along my merry way. She’s 5 and still learning to read, but I have plans. OOOOH, do I have plans.
That sounds about perfect.
The Cool Aunt Gambit is the best way to go. Best. My 5 year old nephew misses me when I’m not around and asks to see me so I can take him to the library, so I’m hoping this signals long term success in the mind molding arena.
You have been to the same strategy sessions as I have, I see.
Mine too!
Yes! I am eagerly waiting for someone in my social circle to have children for me to mold.
A couple of my friends had a small boy child a year and a half ago and I have been giving him books since birth. I was delighted to find out that his current favorite (board book Moby Dick) is one that I got him for his birthday. Yessssss.
FYI The Pink Fairy Book has a story about a princess who has a bunch of adventures, one of which is rescuing another princess. Then Princess No. 1 gets turned into a man with a hilarious “curse” that Princess No. 1 is clearly really into, and the Prince & Princess No. 2 get married and live happily ever after.
It is amazing. Like, you really get that the princesses don’t want any dumb old princes or kings long before the gender swap, the gender swap is manifested by a convoluted wizard curse like “I AM SO MAD AT YOU I CURSE YOU TO BE THE OPPOSITE GENDER OF WHATEVER GENDER YOU ARE RIGHT NOW WHICH I THINK IS A MAN BUT I AM NOT GOING TO BE MORE SPECIFIC” and then it all gets tied up with some kind of super sexist aphorism alluding to the new penis, as if the storyteller realized just how far off the beaten path he’d gone and had to bring it back around. Why can’t I find my copy. God I love those fairy tale books.
PST!!!!: http://www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/pink.htm They’re in the public domain now, and online! YAY!
OH MY LORD. EEE this is what I’m doing while I ride the train for 2 hours this afternoon. Wonderful. Thank you so much!
If you want the story you mentioned, it’s actually in the Violet Fairy Book (I just spent *ahem* a little time looking for it), and it’s called “The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy.”
Oh boy, I am extremely sorry I got that wrong and extremely delighted that you found it.
“Do not allow even the name of Jane Austen to be breathed in the walls of your home.” Excellent house rule, I should institute it immediately. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go hunt out a copy of We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
MUSHROOM PLANET. OMG.
Yet another brick in the wall of why Mallory is THE BEST.
My kids also loved the Phantom Tollbooth . Read that too
VITALLY IMPORTANT. Teaches both basic and advanced principles of wordplay and punnage. Never gets old. Delightful drawings.
Ugh! The Phantom Tollbooth will have no place in my home. It was foisted upon me at the tender young age of twelve and although I understood the wordplay, did not find it funny or amusing.
🙁
Me too! I thought I was the only one! (Well, I thought the Doldrums were funny. But the book as a whole never amounted to anything for me.)
I love it, but I can’t manage to keep a copy in my house – I have bought it about fifteen times and it keeps vanishing. I’m now waiting for it to mysteriously vanish off my kindle.
My mother gave me a copy of Ivanhoe when I was about that age and I could never figure out why. at the same time she gave my older brother a copy of Joseph Conrad’s The Sea-Wolf and I tried really hard to work out what this meant, if it meant she thought he was smarter than I was, et cetera. The confusing part is that Joseph Conrad didn’t write The Sea-Wolf, Jack London did, but I’m sure she never gave either of us any Jack London. She was not a bad mother, only an odd one.
But if I ever have charge of a child I will do my best to keep Wodehouse away from it entirely until puberty (the age of susceptibility) is completely over, along with Monty Python and anything else John Cleese ever touched and Terry Pratchett. If they read Terry Pratchett then I spend their entire college fund on expensive liquors. They will be permitted to read Douglas Adams but only if they never ever talk about it. I know there is another school of thought under which one is advised to let this kind of thing run its course at an early age so that it passes as quickly as possible, but this seems to me like a remnant of the kind of barbaric childrearing school of yore that advised, like, neighborhood mumps parties so that everyone could get sick at once. nowadays we have innoculations for that sort of thing.
I knew this day would have to come. Here we part ways forever.
yes today is a day of revelations. If that were not enough to make me a blood enemy of the toast I could also reveal that I have banned all talk of the doctor who and sherlock from my office. anybody who says the name stephen moffat will be fired, bang, like a shot to the heart, no second chances. They all know I mean it.
you are right about the order of the fairy books though. Blue Red Yellow Green is how I do it but regardless, Blue comes first.
I approve heartily of your He Who Shall Not Be Named rule.
Life, the Universe, and Everything was one of the first books I ever read–though I’m told I’d read a chapter, flip ahead a random number of pages, flip backwards. So when I read it again later, I realized I had very little idea of the narrative throughline.
I disagree with some of these but I will never disagree with introducing children to the X-Wing books because I love Star Wars forever.
Worth noting that the Allston books will develop a sense of humor, while the Stackpole books promote a sense of cleverness. Also being kinda annoying.
Let’s be real, Starfighters of Adumar FOREVER.
I want – no, NEED – a cloak with a kick-dancing line of Wes Jansons.
And Wedge/Iella are my OTP.
I like Tam-Lin AND the works of Marion Zimmer Bradley (both of which I ended up reading ~14).
So there.
Duly noted; your name has been struck from the Book of Life.
How did you get my parent’s designated reading list.
How. HOW.
BRB back to get minorSnake some wodehouse.
The Last of the Really Great Whandoodles was my favorite favorite favorite book for a long time (although I think I read it before eleven- how old are you in third grade?) and no one else I’ve talked to has ever heard of it. I would pretend to be the High Behind Splintercat constantly.
(If I were making a similar list, I’d recommend some Bruce Coville around 9-10, but maybe that’s just me. And William Sleator’s Green Futures of Tycho if you want them to develop a more nuanced idea of time travel at a young age.)
They SAY they haven’t heard of it, but that book exists in the back of everyone’s mind as a fever dream waiting to emerge. As soon as you get sick it merges with your vague memories of Return to Oz and starts playing in your head, with a distorted version of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds as a soundtrack.
Oh my GOD, I loved that book, but as much as I loved Mandy. Dear God but I loved Mandy. I wanted a little cottage in the woods to call my own! And then fall into a fever and be rescued by a lovely family! My own family was fine, but they didn’t have a MANOR, geez.
I found my copy while I was packing books for my move. I had to force myself to put it away instead of calling it a night, and reading instead.
Wait, are we still allowed to fall asleep with our books as adults, or is that only for three year olds???
It is probably too new to make a definitive pronouncement upon, but I have been reading Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events to my kid at bedtime for something like the last four months. Kid is five now, four when we began, and is learning much about patience, the unending awfulness of all existence, why an impressive vocabulary is to be desired, and how parents sometimes laugh at inexplicable, non-funny parts of books. Highly recommended. (These also replaced the interminable Thomas the Tank Engine stories at bedtime and their weird fetishization of “usefulness,” whatever that is.)
Speaking of Thomas the Tank Engine: Thomas the Imperialist Tank Engine: The not-so-hidden subtexts of the popular children’s show.
oh my god thank you for giving me another reason to look smug when I issue Thomas books in the children’s library to snotty parents.
The Good Master by Kate Seredy. Caddie Woodlawn. The Four-Story Mistake. No Flying in the House. All-of-a-Kind Family. The Hundred Dresses. The Best-Loved Doll.
All FORGOTTEN. All awesome.
:lights a candle in memory of Caddie Woodlawn:
Aghh I love The Good Master so much! Did you ever read the sequel – The Singing Tree? Also wonderful.
Additionally, A Begonia for Mrs. Applebaum, or The Pigman, or anything by Paul Zindel, really. I took a poll at work and NO ONE HAS READ HIS BOOKS. Travesty.
I don’t work with you but I’ve read most of them! The Pigman always made me terribly sad.
THE BEST LOVED DOLL
OH MY GOD
I completely forgot about that book until RIGHT NOW, what a beautiful book.
*sniff* The Best-Loved Doll!
I am also thrilled to find another Melendy family fan. I have always wanted to live next door to the Four-Story Mistake, so I can hang out with Rush and Randy and go ice-skating down the frozen brook.
The Little Fur Family, asdaf;lskjfl;askjdf;alskdjf! I’d forgotten about that book in my callow adulthood, and now Garth Williams’ illustrations come back to pierce me in the heart. (As they always do.)
Also, I loved Betsy-Tacy and Maurice in equal measure, though not quite 15 years apart…more like 10 and 16. Wish I could get my 11-year-old to put down the fantasy for a few min. and read Lovelace and LMM.
I was just talking about the wonder that is Leo and Diane Dillon’s illustrations and AUGH The People Could Fly is heartbreaking and wonderful and beautiful and just right for a child.
Despite spending most of my childhood with, as my mother says, “my nose in a book,” I have only read two of these. And evidently I did not have the correct background for one of them. Is there any hope for me?
EDIT: I should add that at least I didn’t read any Austen until I was an adult.
I only got the Bullfinch at the proper age, having apparently read Everything Else But Wot Were Right.
They occasionally let me out in public, and to my knowledge I have not sparked any riots.
This is proof of failure, I think.
If you read all the Jane Austen and all the Charlotte Bronte around the same time, do they cancel each other out?
Sadly, no. You favor whichever fits your sensibilities at that time, and you become an Austen or Bronte partisan for life. (You may lose friends over this in your 30s.)
I read both for the first time around the same time (early-mid teens) and loved the Austen, DESPISED Jane Eyre. It turned me off the Brontes for years. Given that at the time, I was reading and loving Terry Pratchett and Diana Wynne Jones (who, I think, are similar to Jane Austen in tone and writing style) this probably accounts for my continued love of Austen and indifference to the Brontes (except Anne).
Same Here (Jane Eyre at 14, Emma at 15, and then all the rest over the next year). I have tried so many times (SO MANY TIMES) to read the Brontes and the only one I can swallow is Anne. I blame early exposure to Jane Austen on top of a steady diet of Vonnegut as a preteen/teenager. Also Charlotte Bronte is the clearest example of someone who simply does not get Austen.
Ugh, agreed. I always just picture Charlotte Bronte mouthing off about how neat and unrealistic Austen is and Anne sitting there silently mouthing the words “heroine changes womanising gambling alcoholic through the love of a good woman, hero must still become blinded and fully dependent on heroine in order to descend to heroine’s level before they can get together”.
Relevant: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=202
Kate Beaton always knows the right thing to say.
(Full disclosure: I may own the tee shirt with Charlotte and Emily delightedly reading “Byronic” magazine” together, and Anne sitting nearby with her arms folded, looking disapproving.)
Also relevant: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=4
I was given a copy of Jane Eyre when I was twelve and it completely rocked my world, changed my life, etc. etc. It probably mostly appealed at the time due to the heady mix of gothic romance and proto-feminism, but it was a total gateway drug to classical literature.
Me, too! 1996, twelve years old!
But I picked it out for myself from the children’s section of Barnes & Noble (okay it was in the “literary classics” corner meant for children who were reading ahead and was technically YA-level, but this was before the YA section exploded, so it was kind of more like a transitional area to the literary fiction shelves?) and also I picked up Sense & Sensibility because I got the title confused with Pride & Prejudice, which I knew about because of the Colin Firth film and older friends raving about it. And i LOVED Jane Eyre and LOATHED Sense & Sensibility (it was kind of boring and also the wrong people got together) and studiously avoided reading anything by Jane Austen ever again until I was at university working on my English lit degree and finally knew enough about Regency England and social mores and stuff for it to make sense. I like S&S better than P&P now but still find Austen to be kind of boring I’m sorry to say, except not as boring at Dickens or George Eliot (who wrote awesome stuff, but too many words), and also I can actually appreciate what she was doing.
But yeah, Jane Eyre at age 12. It’s still one of my favorite books. As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned so many more nuances of it.
My uncle gave me a (beautiful!) copy when I was seven. My monstrous height must have fooled him into thinking I was much older than I actually was. The red room scene scared me off of it for years, but I finally reread it when I was twelve, and loved it. Twelve must be the magic Jane Eyre age.
We read it for English class in…eighth grade, I want to say? Possibly seventh. Anyway, I went to a girls’ school, and that book rocked our entire class. I mean, we gossiped over each new chapter like it was the universal mandatory soap opera. I found out there was a MUSICAL of Jane Eyre and bought the soundtrack and we all passed it around and listened to it with delight. (Oh, that musical. So wonderfully terrible.)
In approximate order of age propriety, from age 6 on:
Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jansson (Apocalypse!)
The Mouse and his Child, by Russell Hoban (Philosophy!)
Half Magic, by Edward Eager (Consequences!)
The Diamond in the Window, by Jane Langton (Transcendentalism!)
The House with a Clock in its Walls, by John Bellairs (Antiquity!)
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle (Space-time!)
Lizard Music, by Daniel Pinkwater (Self-definition!)
The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin (Compassion!)
YES LIZARD MUSIC YES YES YES
If she likes Edward Eager, then it’s maybe time for E. Nesbit, starting with Five Children and It.
And if she likes The Westing Game, follow up with The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I mean Noel). If that goes well, start on the cryptic crosswords and maybe start preparing her for the MIT Mystery Hunt.
And of course keep the Moomintroll books coming.
I wish I could get my kid to read E. Nesbit, starting with Five Children and It, of course. She loved The Westing Game, but we haven’t been able to find The Mysterious Disappearance…it may be out of print?
And Moomin books 4eva…my favorite is Moominsummer Madness.
The Mysterious Disappearance is, appropriately enough, kind of hard to find. As of right now though it’s actually on Amazon for three dollars if you want to buy it, but you may also be able to get your hands on a copy for free by invoking Interlibrary Loan, depending on the power level of your local library.
Moominsummer Madness is wonderful and ridiculous. The best part IMO is when Snufkin ousts the Park Keeper by planting Hattifattener seeds (!) in the park, and then, while triumphantly celebrating the downfall of authority and proclaiming the freedom of people to do as they like, realizes that he is now the guardian of all of the woody children he has just set free.
If either of you are in the UK, Moominsummer Madness is on at the theatre this summer in WImbledon.
Yes to Half Magic and The Westing Game, but especially Daniel Pinkwater!
The sheer number of books on this list whose names I have been trying to remember for LITERALLY YEARS is overwhelming. Truly, you have performed a great service this day.
I don’t want any of my own children, but I do want to control what they are reading. Can I borrow some kids for a book club?
Here is the question: do we give children Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “A Little Princess?”
Pro: it teaches kids that there are plenty of jobs that just have to be done and you shouldn’t complain about them, even if you think you deserve better, because the truth is that the type of work you do does not define the type of person you are.
Con: that type of thinking can really screw you over when you’re an adult and you’ve been doing “entry level” for too long and HR is going on about why there aren’t going to be any promotions this year.
I think I read one too many “follow your dreams” type books and it screwed me over in the other direction, aka the field that I thought was my “calling” or whatnot is turning out to be a mess and I feel like a failure because I’m not Doing What I Love and Loving What I Do.
Erm.
That is to say yes, give them A Little Princess, probably.
You can never go wrong with A Little Princess. You just can’t.
True story: Mallory gave my innocent child a book about murder and pretended she didn’t know it was about murder.
Hansel and Gretel?
The Little Mermaid?
The Juniper Tree?
The Three Little Pigs?
Snow White?
oh wow THEY’RE ALL ABOUT MURDER…..
It’s that Who Stole My Hat (or whatever) fish book!!!
BEST BOOK. Well, second best, to Have You Seen My Hat.
SOSOSSOOOOOO good.
To be fair, she didn’t even realize it was about abortion too.
I don’t see Roald Dahl yet!
…Is he why I’m weird?
“Danny the Champion of the World” is one of my favorite books from childhood.
EEEEE I read “Danny the Champion of the World” just at the time that Queen’s “We Are the Champions” was all over the radio and it was a magical week of childhood that I had a SOUNDTRACK to my AWESOME BOOK also ps drunk pheasants.
BFG to build a mythology of dreams, Matilda to make them believe they are capable of magic, Witches to instill a healthy fear of overly friendly women, and on and on. Vital.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar for generosity and staring at the wick of a candle like a weirdo every time someone had a candle burning!
Dear god. The Witches was very likely the first book to give me nightmares. Of course that meant I absolutely loved it. BFG was my favourite Roald Dahl though.
…James and the Giant Peach to remind you that loyal friends come in all shapes and sizes. Charlie & the Great Glass Elevator just to freak you the fuck out.
The single thing that has most stuck with me from Dahl’s books is a line from James & The Giant Peach, wherein James asks the worm why he’s anxious, and the worm, under duress, replies: “The problem is…the problem is there’s no problem!” This utterance has stood me in good stead lo these however many years it’s been since I read the book.
WHERE WAS THIS LIST WHEN I NEEDED TO BUY A FIVE YEAR OLD A BOOK FOR HER BIRTHDAY (THREE WEEKS AGO)?
I got her a copy of Where The Sidewalk Ends that came with a CD of Silverstein reading some of the poems, mostly based off of my memory of having a cassette of the same and listening to it to it ENDLESSLY. At her party, she made me read her the picture book version of Frozen, then made someone else read it to her again, then insisted that the CD that came with IT be put in so she could take it in two more times. She’ll… she’ll grow to appreciate our gift.
Also I had a bunch of the Fairy Books from a young age and have a whole shelf of them now. It’s a shame that the Brown Fairy Book has an introduction noting that the stories have been cleaned up for the enjoyment of “white children.”
She absolutely will grow to enjoy and appreciate your gift. The fact that she has so much love for the book version of “Frozen” is a great sign!
I don’t think there’s any need to worry and get judgemental. I read a huge range of books as a child, including crap and good stuff. Part of developing as a reader is making choices and discoveries for yourself instead of having the perfect books shoved on you. Your gift sounds awesome, and I’m sure she’ll appreciate it a lot.
When your little one asks for Harry Potter, give her only Lewis Barnavelt.
but but but The Paperbag Princess, regardless of gender. At birth.
nah. nah. get the jackson to them early– that is, if you’re not the parent or aren’t parenting. you have to take some precautions. at twelve? thirteen? whatever it was, merricat was catharsis.
I’m really all about this but it is SO HARD when you can’t supervise them constantly. I have been trying to mold the minds of my little sisters (13 and 15 years younger than me) since they were born, and as soon as I stopped returning to the house four times a year (that is, post college, right about the time they were ready for chapter books) they snuck off and became obsessed with Twilight. I had to give them Jane Eyre* as corrective action, and they didn’t even read it! The number of books I have given them that have never been read (approximately four per year per girl, two each at holidays and birthdays) makes me want to tear my hair out.
They will grow to appreciate your library of excellent taste once they outgrow the Twilight nonsense. You are a good big sister.
Oh, gods, my kid sister (currently 15) has not utilized the smallest fraction of my vast book collection I left for her, because she apparently “doesn’t like things set in the past.” EVERYTHING’S SET IN THE PAST, ASSHOLE, THAT’S HOW YOU CAN WRITE ABOUT IT IN THE PRESENT!
I mean, she also barely reads at all and is popular and a top-level sprinter and swimmer and I don’t know when she got changeling-ed but damn my books are going to waste.
I continue to maintain that The Haunting of Hill House should be added to the Mandatory Shirley Jackson Reading List.
Yes yes yes to all of these!
But I disagree that the Charlemagne bits of Bullfinch are boring. Yes, there are lengthy descriptions of scenery and the different fabrics that make up people’s clothes, but even those can be really funny when properly declaimed in Serious Storytelling Voice. Plus there are still people who get turned into trees and then people who have conversations with them as if having conversations with tree-friends is the most natural thing in the world.
D’AULAIRES! The illustrated family tree is why I know so much about Greek Mythology.
Also basically everything else on this list I discovered during or after college (or not yet), so, I suppose I’ll have to disown my parents for doing a terrible job of raising me. That’s the point of this list, right?
There was a copy of the D’Aulaires in my elementary school library, and I’m pretty sure I checked it out every month.
I have a year and a half old niece so this is all perfect and will be utilized to make sure she doesn’t grow up to be a boring monster. Also I think in that 5-7 year range Shel Silverstein’s “The Missing Piece Meets The Big O” because every time I read it I still cry.
ALSO CALVIN AND HOBBES
For the under-10 set, I humbly suggest:
.All Three Scary Stories books, with the original illustrations (I have a set I am jealously guarding for my nephew/any future children of mine)
-An unexpurgated copy of Grimm’s tales
-Rold Dahl’s children’s books
And if your child takes an interest in spiritual matters:
-Butler’s Lives of the Saints and/or Foxe’s book of Martyrs (pretty much the best body horror I read as a child)
also, the complete stores of Hans Christian Andersen
Agreed, but only if “the Little Mermaid” is mysteriously missing.
My first Barbie is missing her toes, because I was playing Cinderella and she was an evil stepsister, and I had read the unexpurgated Grimms. I was five. FAIRY TALES ARE WHY I’M WEIRD
I am SO MAD they threw out the original art and put in that new tame not-scary-at-all art instead for the Scary Stories books. SO MAD. That has hobbled the stories entirely. The thing that scared me about the spiders-in-her-face story was the spiders in her face, yes, but the picture made it 1000% worse (and therefore 1000% more memorable).
“Scary Stories…” books absolutely are not the same without the insanely creepy original art.
And I am still not completely over that “spiders in her face” story. To this day, when I get an especially big welt from a mosquito bite, I have to talk myself down because my brain wants to go: “What if it’s a spider bite? And what if a week from now, thousands of baby spiders suddenly come pouring out of my leg??” even though I know that in reality this is not a thing which happens.
I am so glad that the Toast understands how much time I spend thinking about which books my as-yet-unconceived children will read. To the Google Doc!
Just an FYI, if you give your kid D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths at age 5 she WILL obsessively inquire as to what Grecian God is to thank for each and every home appliance.
!!!
THAT IS THE BEST
GOOD JOB
Okay, but when is The Monster at the End of This Book?
Four. Four is perfect for The Monster at the End of This Book. There will be many charming and insane re-enactments of the book at that age.
My nephew is almost two and I know he won’t really appreciate it, but it’s the only book I want to get him.
I’m disappointed to see The Phantom Tollbooth nowhere on this list. 🙁
Don’t kids have to read that in fourth or fifth grade? It’ll get read.
i consider myself “bookish” but the only book on this list i have actually read is good omens, and i was 26 years old when i read it………
Thanks for the heads up on Forster’s “Maurice,” by the way! I’ve only read “The Machine Stops,” and I’ve never known quite which way to jump next.
My recommended order for Forster:
1) A Room with a View (then go watch the Merchant Ivory film because it is in some ways even better than the book)
2) Where Angels Fear to Tread (film optional, except see it anyway for the always-excellent Judy Davis)
3) Maurice (then go watch the film and then obsessively listen to Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 and cry and cry)
4) A Passage to India (then go watch the David Lean film because it is in some ways even better than the book)
5) Howard’s End (then go watch the film, especially for Emma Thompson)
Then read more essays as a palate-cleanser. Then read the books again.
(The Longest Journey is optional.)
Bulfinch is an interesting choice. Thank god you didn’t say Hamilton, she is the worst. I got my Graves’ set when I was eight (still have it), but that also probably explains why my explanations for everything are … different, shall we say.
At 11, give her a copy of Dealing With Dragons. It will help her realize that it is more than acceptable to be smart, self-sufficient, have wonderful witchy friends and not need a man to save you. To reject the idea of even needing saving. She will then scour the library for more of these narratives and by the age of 12 find both the pit dragons and sisters Light and Dark. At 14 she may well find Tam Lin on her own. And Brother to Dragons Companion to Owls. By 18, she will somehow find her way to the only paperback US edition of I Who Have Never Known Men. It will be glorious.
All excellent. I would add archy and mehitabel at about 14.
possible additions that I feel would fit right in here somewhere: [1. Arabel’s Raven, 2. Arabel & Mortimer. 3. Mortimer’s Cross, 4., The Serial Garden, 5. Everything else by Joan Aiken], [6. A Lemon and a Star, 7. The Wild Angel, 8. Terrible, Horrible Edie, 9. Edie on the Warpath], and then 10. Crewe Train by Rose Macaulay
Ah, thank you for including the Berditchever, Ortberg, my love. I would also start her on the Besht early–she won’t appreciate the higher levels of symbolism, but if you plant the seeds young, they are sure to flower. I suppose I am a late bloomer myself–still learning to love Heschl. But Rumi was love at first sight!
Haha, yes, I had absorbed both A Wrinkle in Time and Anne of Green Gables by thirteen. I had the ambition to read all of Madeleine L’engle’s works, but got bored about 3/4 of the way through.
Surely you did not mean to omit Beatrix Potter for the young’uns and Homer’s Odyssey for the older ones?
If s/he masters Rumi, Heschel, and Berditchever, head straight on into Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.
I need help! I have a 7-year-old niece and I would dearly love to set her on this reading course asap, but there’s a catch. Namely, my sister and bro-in-law are fundy Christians and nothing that involves magic, witches, fairies, other religions, no religion, dubious morals, etc, is going to be allowed (although they make a HUGE exception for Disney, which is bursting at the seams with magic but is apparently okay). I need some recs that will expand her horizons, but are subversive enough to pass muster with the parental units. Any ideas??
What about classic Doctor Dolittle? There are talking animals but it’s otherwise wholesome (and extraordinarily weird, which is a plus).
Other classics- The Borrowers, Wind in the Willows? Still breaking the rules but “classics” so might be okay?
This series is probably more appropriate for when she’s older (and also out of print), but I loved all of them- the Sue Barton nurse series by Helen Dore Boylston. It’s a whole series about her becoming a nurse and moving up in her profession. I think they were originally written in the 1930s-50s, so the gender roles are super traditional, but she’s a really strong character (among many strong female characters) and they make for awesome historical reading now.
I feel like most non-fantastical children’s books are horribly depressing- they’re either historical and someone gets a disease and dies, or they’re about animals and the animal dies, etc. Pippi Longstocking?
Also, I have never read nor heard of this series, but I approve of the title: The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place
Edit….welp, fell down the Amazon rabbit hole. The Enola Holmes Mystery Series looks like good times, too. Or how about studying evolution with your naturalist grandfather?: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. And just because I like the title: Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women
Studying evolution, ha! They took her to the Creation Museum last year. o.O But great suggestions otherwise, thanks!
I kind of figured, based on the restrictions, but it sounded so cool!
My cousins eventually got past similar restrictions by simply reading faster than their mom could keep up with them- there may be hope yet!
TELL THEM ALL OF THESE BOOKS ARE DISNEY BOOKS
Excellent suggestion! I’m totally going to hire a graphic designer to make Disney-fied slipcovers for all of them.
This is going to be long. I apologize in advance.
Non-magic books for ages 7-11 that still hold up and have solid and interesting lead female characters:
On the younger reader side, the Ottoline books by Chris Riddell are delightful fun. Ottoline and the Yellow Cat is the first. And the Clementine books by Pennypacker are also solid.
Moving up a bit: most of E. L. Konigsburg, but especially From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The View from Saturday, My Father’s Daughter and The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place. (I always loved Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me Elizabeth, but there’s a character who pretends to be a witch, so that proooobably won’t get past them.)
Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles is AMAZING. It will make you cry buckets of tears, but they will be good tears. Also Love, Ruby Lavender and The Aurora County All-Stars are set in the same community and form a rough trilogy, but don’t need to be read together.
The Westing Game, forever and always.
A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban
The Penderwicks series by Jeanne Birdsall.
See if maybe you can sneak some Joan Aiken past them? They are not all magical, but her writing always is.
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Kelly
The Princess Academy by Shannon Hale, there isn’t really much magic except singing in this. And if they allow Disney, I can’t see it being a problem.
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. It is a bit old for 7, but vital for shortly thereafter.
Further titles, slightly more classic in feeling:
An Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye
The Anne of Green Gables series (as mentioned in passing in the post)
Mandy by Julie Andrews
A Little Princess (which I always liked a great deal more than The Secret Garden)
The Melendy Quartet by Elizabeth Enright. It starts with The Saturdays.
The Moffats books by Eleanor Estes. Well, most of Eleanor Estes, really.
Can you maybe get a Wrinkle in Time by them?
Last one, I promise!
Eva Ibbotson’s non-magical books are wonderful. Journey to the River Sea and Star of Kazan are my favorites.
Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper and Wonder by R. J. Palacio are both wonderful and empathetic and should be in classrooms everywhere.
If you can get The Misfits by James Howe past her parents when she’s 10-12ish, that would be good.
Wow, thank you so much for all the superb suggestions! She’s a little young right now, but I’m hoping C.S. Lewis and Madeline L’Engle will be acceptable because they’re both Christian writers. (Although in their world, L’Engle’s Episcopalianism is baaaarely Christian…she’s practically Catholic!)
The Chronicles of Narnia break the rules but they break the rules for Jesus so I feel like maybe they are OK?
A few ideas: Little House in the Big Woods and the rest of the series, The Boxcar Children, The Twenty-One Balloons, and Around the World in 80 Days.
Some non-magic middle-grade books:
Caddie Woodlawn and Our Only May Amelia — both feature strong female protagonists
The Bronze Bow — Jesus is a character, so I feel like her parents couldn’t object
Holes
Catherine, Called Birdy
A Drowned Maiden’s Hair — features the supernatural, but only the fraudulent kind so it’s
And, I cannot stress this enough: when she’s older (15-17), Greensleeves by Eloise Jarvis McGraw. Out of print, so I’m telling you now so you’ve got ten years to get your hands on it. No fantasy or magic. It’s about figuring out what you want, and about what falling in love is actually like in a blessedly trope-countering way.
Also! There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom, for empathy and counseling (in an 8-year-old-appropriate way). And not pigeonholing people, which seems like a good message to hear if your parents are fundamentalist.
Winnie-the-Pooh
Swallows and Amazons (I have not read personally but several people I admire loved it as kids)
The Shrinking of Treehorn (Florence Heide, illustrations by Edward Gorey)
Zilpha Keatley Snyder (any/all: The Egypt Game, The Changeling, Black and Blue Magic, The Headless Cupid)
Clement Freud’s Grimble and Grimble at Christmas
I still have (and occasionally read) these books. My child remains unconvinced but they are there if she changes her mind.
But whither Thurber? There is no child that could not be improved by the liberal application of The 13 Clocks, followed by The Wonderful O (which, contrary to what you are thinking, is about an island people freeing themselves from oppressors who have denied them the letter O). The former will teach them both that everything is a trope and a literary device and that literary devices have feelings too and there are, in fact, very few rules; the latter, that one can do truly hilarious things by removing the letter O, and that the weirdest, terriblest bullies in the world are just, like, acting out their own issues, man, and are best disposed of in a fantastical miasma.
Yeah, pretty much. But the Brown Fairy Book (with all the weird ethnic tales not the Grimm standards) and Trollope at the end.
I need to wait THREE ENTIRE YEARS to start my nephew on this reading plan. I am going to set a calendar invite for his third birthday.
Awesome, but I have two questions:
1) my child is 5 next month. Is it too late to start the program? Is he already ruined?
2) Jane Austen is a brilliant and sarcastic satirist and a master of situational comedy and snark and I’ll hear no slurs against her. That isn’t really a question I guess so much as a statement.
I think perhaps the concern is that if you read Jane Austen at fifteen, you won’t see the satire, situational comedy, or snark at all and will just see the love stories, although personally I don’t find this such a developmental disaster.
OH MY GOD THANK YOU MALLORY THANK YOUUUUUUUU
D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths was something I checked out of the library constantly as a kid. Looooved it. I’ve been trying to figure out what it was lately, and THAT’S IT!!!! Buying that right now, for my child who is still a fetus.
The D’Aulaires also wrote and illustrated a book of Norse mythology that is exceedingly wonderful. Buy that one too!
This hypothetical child would be interesting, if a little alarming, but also entirely unlike my actual child, except for the mythology part. My actual child has had a singular fascination with the Grim Reaper since age 5 and is presumably headed for a lifetime of Poe, Edward Gorey, and wearing all black.
Clearly, if you haven’t started him on them already, John Bellairs should be integrated post-haste.
1. Immediately after menarche: Connie Willis’s “Even the Queen.”
2. Special modification for Jewish kids: All-in-the-Family books at age seven or eight. Be prepared for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to be more unsettling than usual, as the kid may be confused that there were non-Jews living in pre-World War I Brooklyn.
3. Disagree with the Jackson-before-Parker rule, as “A Telephone Call” is invaluable around the time of first dumping.
3a. Of course at that time, I may make my daughters read Antonia Fraser’s biography of Mary Queen of Scots, whose underlying message is MEN WILL SCREW YOU OVER, and immature dickheads will ruin your kingdom, but your loyal ladyservants will hang with you in the end.
4. There was some talk of Cool Aunt-ing upthread? Cool Aunt applicants should call me; I have vacancies.
I just came to say that by age 15 I had read absolutely no Austen and had completely devoured “Just An Ordinary Day”!
I have no doubt that The Little Fur Family is excellent, but at $340 a copy, my two small humans and I will have to make do without, somehow. Does anyone have any alternate furry book suggestions for us?
Well, the $9.99 reissue comes in a slipcase, but I *think* it is also fur covered? The specific ISBN is 9780694000043. If it is not fur covered, it still has the fur belly. The problem with this title is that there have been so damn many editions, even title source cannot keep them straight.
D’Aulaire! My friends and I discovered that in middle school and were firmly convinced we were the only kids in the entire world cool enough to love it. These days, of course, it’s practically required reading if you want to enjoy the Percy Jackson books. Proof positive that the world really is getting better.
The beautiful thing about the Betsy-Tacy books is that you can keep reading through the series as you grow up, and the characters grow up right with you. Betsy in Spite of Herself helped me survive my high school years.
Now I just need to go find the perfectly illustrated copy of The Blue Fairy Book and Just-So Stories for my illustration-loving 6yo …
You may want to join the Betsy-Tacy Society. http://www.betsy-tacysociety.org/
I loved these books so hard! Re-read the whole series a few years ago.
Also I think Tacy & Betsy are gay together. The end!!