CARLA’S RECOMMENDED FICTION CLASSICS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
Aesop:
Aesop’s Fables
Alcott, Louisa M.: Little Women (Little Men and Jo’s Boys are sequels); Eight Cousins (Rose in Bloom is sequel); An Old Fashioned Girl; Jack and Jill; Under the Lilacs (Cornelia Meigs, Invincible Louisa is good bio of her.)
Anderson, Hans Christian: (various translations) Hans Anderson: His Classic Fairy Tales; Anderson’s Fairy Tales
Angeli, Marguerite De: Book of Nursery & Mother Goose Rhymes; Thee, Hannah; The Door in the Wall
Baum, Frank: The Road to Oz; Rinkitink in Oz
Blackmoore, Richard D.: Lorna Doone
Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre
Bunyan, John: Pilgrim’s Progress—various versions: Dangerous Journey (ed by Oliver Hunkin, 1985); The Annotated Pilgrim’s Progress (Moody Press, 1980)
Burgess, Thornton: Old Mother West Wind
Burnett, Frances Hodson: The Secret Garden; Little Lord Fauntleroy; The Little Princess
Burnford, Sheila: The Incredible Journey
Carroll, Lewis: Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass
Cather, Willa: O Pioneers
Cervantes, Miguel de: The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha (great Spanish classic, in various translations)
Collodi, Carlo (a.k.a. Carlo Lorenzini): Pinocchio (various translations from the Italian)
Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock: The Little Lame Prince
Dante: The Divine Comedy (Medieval Italian classic, various translations; Dorothy L. Sayers provides best annotations)
Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles:
Oliver Twist; David Copperfield
Dodge, Mary Mapes: Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates
Drewery, Mary: Devil in Print (historical novel about Tyndale’s struggle to translate the Bible into English)
Fisher, Dorothy: Understood Betsy
Gibson, Fred: Old Yeller
Grahame, Kenneth: The Wind in the Willows
Grimm, the Brothers (various translations): Fairy Tales (Fritz Fredel); Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Hale, Lucretia P.: The Complete Peterkin Papers
Hawthorne, Nathaniel: Tanglewood Tales & Wonder Books (Greek myths)
Homer: Iliad, Odyssey—various translations: Gerald Gottlieb: The Adventures of Ulysses; Barbara Leonie Picard: The Iliad of Homer, The Odyssey of Homer
Irving, Washington: Rip Van Winkle, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Other Tales
“King Arthur and His Knights” is English oral legend retold by various authors.
Kingsley, Charles: The Heroes
Kipling, Rudyard: Just-So Stories
Knight, Eric: Lassie, Come Home
Lamb, Charles & Mary: Tales from Shakespeare (the bard’s work retold)
Lang, Andrew: The Red Fairy Book (etc.); Arabian Nights; Tales of Troy and Greece
L’Engle, Madeleine: A Wrinkle in Time; A Wind in the Door; A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Lewellyn, Richard: How Green Is My Valley
Lewis, C. S.: The Chronicles of Narnia (The Magician’s Nephew; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; The Horse and His Boy; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Silver Chair; The Last Battle)
Lobel, Arnold: Frog and Toad Are Friends (etc.); Mouse Soup
London, Jack: The Call of the Wild
Marshall, Catherine: Christy; Catherine Marshall’s Story Bible
McDonald, George: At the Back of the North Wind; The Princess and the Goblin; The Princess and Curdie; The Christmas Stories of George McDonald
Milne, A.A.: Winnie-the-Pooh; House at Pooh Corner; When We Were Very Young
Montgomery, Lucy Maud:
Anne of Green Gables; Anne of Avonlea; Anne of the
Island; Anne of Windy Poplars; Anne’s House of
Dreams; Anne of Ingleside;
Emily of New Moon; Emily Climbs; Emily’s Quest
Norton, Mary: The Borrowers
Norton, Juster: The Phantom Toll Booth
O’Dell, Scott: Island of the Blue Dolphins; The Hawk That Dare Not Hunt by Day; The King’s Fifth
O’Hara, Mary: My Friend Flica
Porter, Gene Stratton: Freckles; Girl of the Limberlost; Laddie; The Keeper of the Bees; The White Flag; Her Father’s Daughter; A Daughter of the Land; The Harvester; At the Foot of the Rainbow; Michael O’Halloran; The Song of the Cardinal.
Pyle, Howard: The Wonder Clock, Salt & Pepper; Men of Iron; Otto of the Silver Hand; Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates (compiled by Merle Johnson); The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood; The Story of King Arthur and His Knights
Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan: The Yearling
Rawls, Wilson: Where the Red Fern Grows
Ruskin, John: The King of the Golden River
Scott, Sir Walter: (advanced readers) Ivanhoe; Rob Roy; Quentin Durward; Kenilworth; The Black Dwarf
Robin Hood is an English oral legend: various authors.
Sewell, Anna: Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse
Sharp, Margery: The Rescuers
Spyri, Johanna: Heidi
Stevenson, Robert Lewis: A Child’s Garden of Verses; Treasure Island; The Black Arrow; Kidnapped; David Balfour (sequel)
Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver’s Travels
Tolkien, J.R.R.: The Hobbit; The Fellowship of the Ring; The Two Towers; The Return of the King; Farmer Giles of Ham
Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; The Prince and the Pauper, etc.
Sayers, Dorothy L.: Lord Peter Wimsey novels, Dante tr.
Verne, Jules: A Long Vacation ; Michael Strongoff: A Courier of the Czar; Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; Around the World in Eighty Days; The Mysterious Island; Journey to the Center of the Earth; Master of the World; From the Earth to the Moon
White, E. B.: Charlotte’s Web
Wiggin, Kate Douglas: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Wilde, Oscar: The Selfish Giant
Wilder, Laura Ingalls: Little House Series plus On the Way Home (diary); West from Home (letters)
Williams, Margery: The Velveteen Rabbit
Wyss, Johann David: The Swiss Family Robinson
SOME NONFICTION CLASSICS
Burgess: The Small
Woman
Carson, Rachel: Silent Spring
Carlyle: The French Revolution
Gibbons: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Stanley: In Darkest Africa
Washington, Booker T.: Up From Slavery
SOME CLASSICS FOR VERY YOUNG READERS
Beskow,
Elsa: Pelle’s New Suit
Brown, Margaret Wise: Goodnight Moon
Galdone, Paul: The Little Red Hen
McCloskey: Make Way for Ducklings
Piper, Watty: The Little Engine That Could
Potter, Beatrix: The Tale of Peter Rabbit
