The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Fiona1986 »

I love Each Peach Pear Plum. I don't think it's meant to be challenging even for toddlers it's just meant to be fun. It has great rhythms for reading aloud and it's beautifully illustrated.
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Poppy »

Courtenay wrote:...The Hunger Games is most definitely young adult fiction!
The Hunger Games is recommended to 12+, but I have heard of children from the age of 9 reading and enjoying this trilogy. I read them lately, and though they were quite gory and graphic at times, I thought they were quite easy-reads, really.
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Courtenay »

I haven't read them, but flicking through The Hunger Games in the newsagent's to see if I might like it, I didn't get the impression I would have enjoyed it at age 12, let alone 9!! :shock: Just because something is easy to read language-wise, doesn't necessarily mean the content is suitable for younger readers.

I didn't feel the 50 books list was unfairly biased towards Roald Dahl, but then, I grew up on a lot of his books for children and loved them! Also glad to see two of the Narnia books there (I would have voted for all seven, but that's just me :wink: ). But I would definitely have liked to see many more Blyton titles there. Overall, though, nearly 20 of the 50 are ones that I would have voted for myself as among the best children's books I've ever read.
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Poppy »

Having read the first two Hunger Games books myself, I can only recall about two scenes of disturbing violence. I am really, really squeamish so anything disgusting bothers me, but I can honestly say that, compared to some other modern children's fiction, it isn't really that bad at all, to be honest.
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Farwa »

Thank you for the excellent list, Courtenay! I have read almost half of them, and I certainly think that they should be read by everyone, not just children.
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by John Pickup »

I was surprised to see John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids on the list, I've never considered it a children's book. I haven't read all that many of the titles, when I was younger my reading was mainly Blyton, Malcolm Saville, Frank Richards, David Severn and others from that period. Apart from Enid and C. S. Lewis, none of the other authors I read as a child are represented.
I only wish I had time to read more modern children's fiction. I still have The Lost Island of Tamarind and its follow-up by Nadia Aguiar to read as well as some of the Helen Moss titles. I've had these books for over a year now and never even glanced at them.
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Rebeccadanielle »

I've read 40 of those books and I have a couple sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read. I think that when a series of books has been popular (Harry Potter) then the series should be listed instead of each novel. I enjoy looking at lists like these, mainly so I can track down books I haven't read. :D
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Farwa »

Yes, me too. :-)
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Lucky Star »

I've only read 19 of the books so I am obviously a bit behind with my children's reading. I am a bit disappointed to find no William, Jennings or Biggles on the list. Also I think that our Enid could easily have had more than one entry. A list compiled by adults I think. :?
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Courtenay »

Yes, it was a list compiled by adults - from a poll of 2,000 "parents" (we're not told either their age range, or their children's). Even so, I would have thought more of them would have read and loved more than one Enid Blyton book, either in their own childhood or from reading to their children!
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Tony Summerfield »

Courtenay wrote:I haven't read them, but flicking through The Hunger Games in the newsagent's to see if I might like it, I didn't get the impression I would have enjoyed it at age 12, let alone 9!! :shock: Just because something is easy to read language-wise, doesn't necessarily mean the content is suitable for younger readers.
I think the original brief was saying that these were the 50 books that every child should read before they are 16. I therefore think you have got to have some young adult books like The Hunger Games for 15 year-olds to read. They are covering a wide age range and you wouldn't expect someone of 15 would be reading The Hungry Caterpillar any more than you would expect someone of 6 to be reading The Hunger Games. Really lists like this should be divided into age groups.
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Katharine »

I was amazed to discover that I've read 18 of the books. Although one (Lord of the Flies) was forced on me because it was studied at school, and I hated it, and there are a couple I wouldn't read again. One or two I'd like to read if I ever get around to it, and the rest I've no desire to read ever - so I'm glad I'm not a child. :wink:

I didn't feel it was a very well balanced book, personally I think it's ludicrous to suggest a child reads the first and last Harry Potter books without reading the ones in between. Possibly some of the others aren't quite as good, but they continue the story, and I would have thought it was very difficult to understand certain parts of the final book without having read all the others.
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by MJE »

Courtenay wrote:Also glad to see two of the Narnia books there (I would have voted for all seven, but that's just me :wink: ).
     I think it would really be fairer in lists of this sort to count a whole series as one entry when all the books are clearly part of a longer story-arc - as with both Harry Potter and the Narnia books. Singling out particular ones in such series doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Lucky Star wrote:I've only read 19 of the books so I am obviously a bit behind with my children's reading.
     Not nearly as behind as you might be, Lucky Star. I think I am going to claim the record and say that I have read about four or five of these - no more. A few more are on my (very long and possibly a bit theoretical) list of books I intend to read, though. Like a few other people, I saw a number of entries that I would have never classified as children's books.
     The thing is that, as a boy, I got hung up on Enid Blyton and read little else as long as there were more Blytons to interest me (so in a way I proved right those critics of Enid Blyton who attack her for holding up children from moving on to other authors). It was only when I ran out of her books (well, not altogether with 600 or 700 in total; but as concerns books by her of the types that interested me) that I started reading other authors - but I was probably by then growing a bit out of children's books in general, but not yet at a stage where I was ready to pick up Enid Blyton or other children's authors once more. In fact, my reading of children's books other than Blyton trickled out over more than a decade rather than just stopped, but, apart from a run of Hardy Boys and other similar books, it did get down to a pretty low rate.
     So that's why my reading of children's books other than Enid Blyton is very low indeed. But all the same, there is a small list of children's books by other authors that I recall with fondness - some read during childhood, and some in early adulthood. Most of these I discuss in a series of posts I made to this thread (mainly on the first two pages of it):

http://enidblytonsociety.co.uk/forums/v ... =18&t=3964

     By early adulthood, while my children's reading was petering out, an interest in science-fiction and related works was growing, and pretty well took over.
     I have to agree with Nigel that lists of this sort don't mean a lot to me, anyway, as opinions are so variable about any supposedly "essential" lists. What are the criteria for determining what is in those lists?

Regards, Michael.
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

I expect the creators of the list just looked at which books were mentioned most often in the survey and then made sure they included a mixture of stories for a mixture of age-groups. This statement amuses me:
As well as childhood favourites including books from the Harry Potter series and Tom’s Midnight Garden, the top 50 includes more adult books such as Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
The Hobbit is very much a children's book whereas the Harry Potter books become darker and more complex as the series progresses - they're a much more challenging read than The Hobbit and I'd class the later ones as "young adult fiction".
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Re: The 50 Books Every Child Should Read

Post by Rob Houghton »

I've read 33 of the titles...mainly because I have a BA in Children's literature. :) I was pleased to see The Magician's Nephew is on there, as I feel this is by far the best Narnia book. I own about another three or four books on the list which I've never read. I'm surprised The Gruffalo or Room On The Broom aren't on the list though, or Fox in Socks which I think is better than Green Eggs and Ham! It was one of my favourite and most often borrowed library books as a young child.
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