This is not an exhaustive list of good books for the early elementary years. These are books that we have enjoyed with our own children and with many children whom we have taught over the years. They provide a good foundation in the joy of reading and listening to stories and set the stage for the appreciation of many great classical epics in later years.

  

Early Reader Books:

 ·         Frog and Toad Books

 ·         Little Bear Books

 ·         Owl at Home and other Arnold Loebel books

 ·         Dr. Seuss books

Fairy Tales and Folk Tales:

The original fairy tales are generally much better than the versions that are heavily adapted for children. Many of these will be too difficult for young children to read on their own but they will enjoy listening to the stories and benefit from the beauty of the language used as well. You’ll be amazed how much better the originals are than the Disney versions!

 ·         The Classic Fairy Tales by Iona and Peter Opie

 ·         Fairy Tales and Fables (The first volume of Collier’s Junior Classics 10 volume set. The whole set is wonderful.)

 ·         Folk Tales by the Brothers Grimm

 ·         Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen

 ·         The Fairy books by Andrew Lang

Myths and Fables:

 ·         D’Aularies Book of Norse Myths

 ·         D’Aulaires Book of Trolls

 ·         D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths

 ·         Aesop’s Fables

 ·         Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

 ·         Arabian Nights (ed. Andrew Lang)

 ·         Flower Fables by Louisa May Alcott

 ·         Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

 ·         Gilgamesh: Man’s First Story by Bernarda Bryson

 ·         Saint George and the Dragon, by Margaret Hodges

Animal Stories:

 ·         My Father’s Dragon

 ·         The Complete Tales of Winnie The Pooh

 ·         Paddington Bear

 ·         Wind in the Willows

 ·         Dr. Dolittle

 ·         Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

 ·         Charlotte’s Web

 ·         The Velveteen Rabbit

 ·         Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling

Fantasy:

 ·         The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald

 ·         The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald

 ·         The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

 ·         Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Class by Lewis Carroll

Poetry:

 ·         The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse in America

 ·         More Coming Soon!

  

Longer Books:

 ·         Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

 ·         Heidi by Johanna Spyri

 ·         The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgeson Burnett

 ·         Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

 ·         Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

 ·         The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss

 ·         The Great Brain (the series by Fitzgerald)

 ·         Little House on the Prairie (the series by Laura Ingalls Wilder)

 ·         Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O’Brien

 ·         Homer Price by Robert McCloskey

Literature for the Later Elementary Years  

This is not an exhaustive list of good books for the later elementary years. These are books that have enriched us and our own children and many children whom we have taught over the years.

  

Louisa May Alcott

 ·         Little Women

Charles Dickens

 ·         Oliver Twist

 ·         A Christmas Carol

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 ·         The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

 ·         The Return of Sherlock Holmes

G.A. Henty

 ·         There are many wonderful books of historical fiction written by G.A. Henty that are well suited to this age group

Rudyard Kipling

 ·         Captains Courageous

Howard Pyle (or the re-writings by Roger Lancelyn Green)

 ·         The Adventures of Robin Hood

 ·         The Story of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table

Mark Twain

 ·         The Prince and the Pauper

 ·         Tom Sawyer

 ·         Tom Sawyer Abroad

Jules Verne

 ·         Around the World in 80 Days

 ·         20,000 leagues under the Sea

Robert Louis Stevenson

 ·         Kidnapped

Daniel Defoe

 ·         Robinson Crusoe

Jack London

 ·         The Call of the Wild

J.R.R. Tolkien

 ·         The Hobbit

 ·         The Lord of the Rings

Others

 ·         The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

 ·         Hans Brinker by Mary Mapes Dogdes

 ·         Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

 ·         Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb

 ·         Watership Down by Richard Adams

 ·         The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford

 ·         Shane by Jack Schaefer

 ·         Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

Literature for Middle School

This is not an exhaustive list of good books for Middle School students. These are books that have enriched us and our own children and many children whom we have taught over the years. We highly recommend that parents read these books with their children.    They afford many opportunities for valuable discussion.

Jane Austen

 ·         Pride and Prejudice

Charlotte Bronte

 ·         Jane Eyre

Richard Henry Dana

 ·         Two Years before the Mast

Charles Dickens

 ·         A Tale of Two Cities

 ·         Great Expectations

 ·         David Copperfield

Alexander Dumas

 ·         The Count of Monte Cristo (The unabridged version is very long but it is well worth the time to read it all.)

 ·         The Three Musketeers

 ·         Twenty Years After

 ·         The Man in the Iron Mask

Harper Lee

 ·         To Kill a Mockingbird

Ernest Hemingway

 ·         The Old Man and the Sea

Homer

 ·         The Iliad — translated by Richmond Lattimore

 ·         The Odyssey — translated by Richmond Lattimore

Sir Walter Scott

 ·         Ivanhoe

Mark Twain

 ·         Huckleberry Finn

James Fenimore Cooper

 ·         The Last of the Mohicans

John Steinbeck

 ·         Of Mice and Men

Robert Louis Stevenson

 ·         Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

William Shakespeare

 ·         A Comedy of Errors

 ·         Much Ado About Nothing

 ·         Hamlet

 ·         Julius Caesar

 ·         and some sonnets

Others

 ·         The Scarlet Pimpernel — Baroness Orczy

 ·         The Good Earth — Pearl S. Buck

 ·         Plutarch’s Lives

Re-read  J.R.R. Tolkien

 ·         The Hobbit

 ·         The Lord of the Rings

…Coming Soon!