Ten books every schoolchild should read

[Enitharmon]

Philip Pullman, Andrew Motion and Joanne Rowling have each named ten books everyone should have read before they leave school at the behest of the Royal Society of Literature. And what a kerfufflle they ahve caused. Especially Andrew Motion.

What do you think? My list is in my Live Journal.

[Melancholy Man]

ten books everyone should have read before they leave school

So, are teachers staying behind with sleeping bags until the little brats have done so?

I'm happy to say I've read all of JKR's, most of PP's and *some* of AM.

Finn Family Moomintroll Tove Jansson

[Jez]

What, they expect schoolkids to read Ulysses before they leave school? No chance.

It's very limiting just picking a list of ten books. What's wrong with encouraging children to read as widely as possible? Children are at different reading levels; they can't expect everyone to read Hamlet, especially if they don't get any enjoyment out of it, or even understand it. That's just a waste.

[zemarl]

let kids read what they can read and what they want to read.

and the odyssey wasn't written by homer charles dickens, unless that's a recent discovery

[Ian]

I saw this in the paper this morning, and read the first two titles on Pullman's list thinking that I was rather good as I'd read both of them. Hadn't read any of the others. For like any of the people.

[Laura]

Kudos to Pullman for putting Where the Wild Things Are on his list. I loved that book as a kid.

Read a little bit on all the lists, but most of those were in college...

[Stargirl]

I've read two books on each of the lists of J.K rowling, PP, and Andrew Motion.

J.K.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee

PP
Finn Family Moomintroll Tove Jansson
Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak
(and I'll be reading Romeo and Juliet next month)

Andrew Motion
The Odyssey Homer Charles Dickens
Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes
(neither of which I have read the whole thing of, but I did read quite a bit of Don Quixote, in the original spanish.)

I think it would take an awful long time to read some of those things all the way through.

I saw this in the paper this morning, and read the first two titles on Pullman's list thinking that I was rather good as I'd read both of them. Hadn't read any of the others. For like any of the people.

Are you saying you haven't read where the wild things are?! You definetly ought to read it, It won't take long weither, the illustrations are amazing aswell.

[york]

Ya sure, people will want to read Don Quixote... that book is garbage, I don't care when it was published, it's trash.

Why would they want kids to read books that would turn them off reasing for their entire life? I mean comon, I've read To Kill a Mockingbird and it aswell is a deathblow to the attention span of teens - and yet it's read in almost every highschool... that's stupid!

[Calix]

It's very limiting just picking a list of ten books. What's wrong with encouraging children to read as widely as possible? Children are at different reading levels; they can't expect everyone to read Hamlet, especially if they don't get any enjoyment out of it, or even understand it. That's just a waste.

Agreed completely...I got absolutely NOTHING out of books like the catcher in the rye or The Great Gatsby. What a massive waste of paper and ink.

The only way I read books I enjoyed and learned from was from actively looking for them and reading them on my own time, including: Jane Eyre (we never read it in school, which surprised me, because I wanted to), The Little Prince, His Dark Materials, A Room with a View, and The Alchemist, to name a few. They always made us read the same recycled Shakespeare, Tolkien, and Bradbury. And no one likes to read what they don't find enjoyable--it's just horribly cruel to put people through that.

I can understand having to pull schoolkids up to certain reading levels, but they should put out lists (such as lists like these mentioned) of suggested material instead of forcing a book on them. I always felt so miserable because of this.

[Laura]

Why would they want kids to read books that would turn them off reasing for their entire life? I mean comon, I've read To Kill a Mockingbird and it aswell is a deathblow to the attention span of teens - and yet it's read in almost every highschool... that's stupid!

Not stupid, and certainly not a deathblow to anyone with an attention span longer than 30 second sound bytes. I read To Kill a Mockingbird first when I was 11, and it remains one of my favorite books. It may not be actionactionaction all the time, but it is a wonderful story about family, and justice, and growing up, and has a beautiful, heart-wrenching ending.

Personally I think it's important for younger kids to read classiscs, or at least have them read to them. That way they have larger vocabularies, know basic punctuation, and can spell. Imagine that.

[hubert]

Personally I think it's important for younger kids to read classiscs, or at least have them read to them. That way they have larger vocabularies, know basic punctuation, and can spell. Imagine that.

I wouldn't recommend reading Milton to improve spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

[Laura]

Personally I think it's important for younger kids to read classiscs, or at least have them read to them. That way they have larger vocabularies, know basic punctuation, and can spell. Imagine that.

I wouldn't recommend reading Milton to improve spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

I really hate Milton and his blatant sexism...(what, Eve only wants to be Adam's equal after eating the apple? Women wanting to be the equals of men is sinful? Women should only want to parade around naked serving fruit while the men have metaphysical discourses with angels? What, what?

*snarls and brandishes foil*

Anyways, I was really refering to To Kill a Mockingbird...

[Townie]

Wot? No Danny Champion of the World or Fantastic Mr Fox - they were the only things I read apart from football programmes and the occassional black-market nudey mag

[Celestial Madness]

In my school, The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird are the only two required books. I think a lot of literature, like Beowulf and Shakespeare for example, are important for students to learn in order to understand the devopment of writing into the literature they enjoy today like HP and HDM.

[Ian]

We were discussing these lists over the dinner table the other day, and the main conclusion we came to was, was that the lists weren't really suitable. They're books that children are meant to read. However, most of the stuff on all of lists probably couldn't be read by people younger than about 13 or 14. I rather feel that Rowling and the poet guy made the mistake of thinking about say 16 year olds, but also thinking about what they think children should read, as opposed to want to read. At least Pullman included real children's literature such as the Mumins I'm also slightly concerned that none of them took into account anythig written in the last 15 years. In that time the children/teen fiction market has exploded, and the choice on offer now is phenominal. I know these aren't classics or whatever, but to an extent, most people are now more likely to read these. This probably does happen every generation: new things are written, and that is what that generation will hark back to in their old age. I just want them to more realistic? Or am I rambling?

[Stelmaria7]

I think i read at least two books on Pullmans list. I want to Read Paradise Lost but i cant find it. Funny Pullman didn't name that one.

[zemarl]

We were discussing these lists over the dinner table the other day, and the main conclusion we came to was, was that the lists weren't really suitable. They're books that children are meant to read. However, most of the stuff on all of lists probably couldn't be read by people younger than about 13 or 14. I rather feel that Rowling and the poet guy made the mistake of thinking about say 16 year olds, but also thinking about what they think children should read, as opposed to want to read. At least Pullman included real children's literature such as the Mumins I'm also slightly concerned that none of them took into account anything written in the last 15 years. In that time the children/teen fiction market has exploded, and the choice on offer now is phenomenal. I know these aren't classics or whatever, but to an extent, most people are now more likely to read these. This probably does happen every generation: new things are written, and that is what that generation will hark back to in their old age. I just want them to more realistic? Or am I rambling?

not just rambling. either that or i ramble with you as a result of being your cousine, y'know, faulty genes and all that
i don't remember specific things i read at a younger age, but i remember voraciously going through everything with words in it that i could get my hands on. the children's encyclopedia britannica, or something like that? shiny. the hobbit? extra shiny. bible stories are pretty good as long as you stick with the less aggressively evangelistic ones (the good samaritan teaches about the dark side of hypocrisy as well as the moral obligation of any citizen with a decent streak in them, and that's just one example). where the wild things are was the coolest book, and i haven't the most vague idea what it's about it would take way more time than i feel like investing to list a "top ten", and serves no purpose to my mind because any kid of mine is going to read whatever they wish ...and hopefully a LOT more than ten.

[tyche]

I suppose those books depend on how old the school children are. I think 16/17 year olds would be able to read and understand any of the books on those lists. Whether they would enjoy them is a different question..

[green ink]

However, most of the stuff on all of lists probably couldn't be read by people younger than about 13 or 14. I rather feel that Rowling and the poet guy made the mistake of thinking about say 16 year olds, but also thinking about what they think children should read, as opposed to want to read. At least Pullman included real children's literature such as the Mumins

Well Pullman could hardly include Northern Lights himself, now could he?
But you're right about the age differences. Pullman seems to have been the only one who actually had children in mind. I like his choices a lot.
Rowling seems to have made a list for teenagers in puberty only,
and that poet fellow doesn't know anything about children if he wants them to read Ullyses. But to me it wasn't at all clear for who that list was intended. Rowling's list and some of Motion's choices are perfectly alright for 14/15 year olds, although if they're going to be read in school a little help from the teachers might go a long way in popularising such choices.

Some of the titles on Motion's list do seem to have gotten there because he thinks it would be good for them, not because they might actually derive some enjoyment out off it.
And forcing books onto children tends not to work if you would like them to keep reading after school.

Pullman is the only one who seems to have gotten that. Where the Wild Things are, fairytales and the Moomin books are real childrens' books and I think when you teach children at a young age to enjoy good books, then it they'll grow up as readers ( I think and I hope).

Hornby is absolutely right as well, children aren't all at the same level, some will get through Quixote on a sunday afternoon, so to speak, others will have trouble figuring out why Max's dinner was still hot when he got back from the island.

[Riali]

The Motions chap's list made me laugh. How many 16 or 17 year olds can get through Ulysses with any sort of understanding? Not a whole helluva lot, I think.
Here's my list, but I did twelve, because I decided I needed a choice for each grade. (highly biased and full of stuff i just plain like)
1. Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss
2. A Child's Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson
3. From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenwieler, E.L. Konigsburg
4. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol
5. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle
6. The Hobbit, Tolkien
7. Watership Down, Richard Adams
8. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
9. Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare
10. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
11. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
12. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte