100 Books Every Child Should Read

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I scanned this list and I have read woefully few of these books.

Young Readers
1. The Twits, by Roald Dahl
2. Burglar Bill, by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
3. The Tiger Who Came To Tea, by Judith Kerr
4. Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak (read this)
5. The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, by Beatrix Potter
6. Yertle the Turtle, by Dr Seuss (read this)
7. Fungus the Bogeyman, by Raymond Briggs
8. The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None Of His Business, by Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erlbruch
9. Room on the Broom, by Julia Donaldson
10. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle (read this)
11. The Cat in the Hat, by Dr Seuss (read this)
12. Charlotte’s Web, by EB White (read this)
13. The Story of Babar, by Jean de Brunhoff (read this)
14. Winnie-the-Pooh, by AA Milne, illustrated by EH Shepard (read this)

Middle Readers

15. Stig of the Dump, by Clive King
16. Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild
17. Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones
18. Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling
19. The Borrowers, by Mary Norton
20. Struwwelpeter, by Heinrich Hoffman
21. The Magic Faraway Tree, by Enid Blyton
22. Danny, the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl
23. George’s Marvellous Medicine, by Roald Dahl
24. Underwater Adventure, by Willard Price
25. Tintin in Tibet, by Hergé
26. The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales (I don’t know if I’ve read the complete tales, but I’ve read a lot)
27. Erik the Viking, by Terry Jones, illustrated by Michael Foreman
28. When the Wind Blows, by Raymond Briggs
29. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, by TS Eliot
30. The Iron Man, by Ted Hughes
31. The Owl and the Pussycat, by Edward Lear
32. The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
33. The Worst Witch Collection, by Jill Murphy
34. Peter Pan, by JM Barrie (read this)
35. Mr Majeika, by Humphrey Carpenter
36. The Water Babies, by Charles Kinglsey
37. A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett (read this)
38. I’m The King of the Castle, by Susan Hill
39. The Wave, by Morton Rhue
40. Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren
41. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl (read this)
42. Bambert’s Book of Missing Stories, by Reinhardt Jung
43. The Firework-maker’s Daughter, by Philip Pullman
44. Tom’s Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce
45. The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
46. The Silver Sword, by Ian Serrallier
47. Cue for Treason, by Geoffrey Trease
48. The Sword in the Stone, by TH White
49. A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K LeGuin (read this)
50. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by JK Rowling (read this)
51. The Chronicles of Narnia Box Set, by CS Lewis (read all of these)
52. His Dark Materials Box Set, by Philip Pullman
53. The BFG, by Roald Dahl
54. Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransome
55. Clarice Bean, Don’t Look Now, by Lauren Child
56. The Railway Children, by E Nesbit
57. The Selfish Giant, by Oscar Wilde
58. Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell
59. Just William, by Richmal Crompton
60. Jennings Goes to School, by Anthony Buckeridge
61. Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jansson
62. The Bad Beginning, by Lemony Snicket (read it)

Early Teens

63. Call of the Wild, by Jack London (read it)
64. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll (read it)
65. The Outsiders, by SE Hinton
66. I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith
67. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken
68. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (read it)
69. Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
70. The Owl Service, by Alan Garner
71. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle
72. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
73. The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank (read it)
74. Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, by Mildred D Taylor (read it)
75. A Kestrel for a Knave, by Barry Hines
76. The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien (read it)
77. War Horse, by Michael Morpurgo
78. Beowulf, by Michael Morpurgo
79. King Solomon’s Mines, by H Rider Haggard
80. Kim, by Rudyard Kipling
81. The Road of Bones, by Anne Fine
82. Frenchman’s Creek, by Daphne Du Maurier
83. Treasure Island, by RL Stevenson
84. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
85. Anne of Green Gables, by L M Montgomery
86. Junk, by Melvin Burgess
87. Cider With Rosie, by Laurie Lee
88. The Go-Between by LP Hartley
89. The Rattle Bag, ed by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes
90. The Song of Hiawatha, by H W Longfellow
91. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
92. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain (read this)
93. True Grit, by Charles Portis
94. Holes, by Louis Sachar
95. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
96. My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell
97. Coraline, by Neil Gaiman (read this)
98. Carrie’s War, by Nina Bawden
99. The Story of Tracy Beaker, by Jacqueline Wilson
100. The Lantern Bearers, by Rosemary Sutcliffe

A tragic 22%.

Books I was sad not to see on this list: The Giving Tree, anything from Jules Verne (how will they know if they like science fiction?), The Lorax (really, they picked The Cat in the Hat over The Lorax?), The Giver, The Cay, Island of the Blue Dolphins, anything by Laura Ingalls Wilder, A Wrinkle in Time, The Secret Garden, The Minpins… books I loved as a kid, and love to this day.

As a horrific sidenote, for many of these, I’ve seen the movie but haven’t read the book. This article claims the thing with getting kids to fall in love with books, is to get them to fall in love with stories. But that’s not at all true. They have to fall in love with the written word. There is an oral tradition, and now we have film. Books are a special kind of love, the kind where you like to look at words and picture it in your mind. This is a vastly different way to express a story.

Everybody loves stories. It takes something special to love books.