If you look at my book shelves and my audiobook collection, you’ll find a lot of kid’s books. I think I like kid’s books more than grown up books. Sometimes they’re just better. Here are my favourites.
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
I dare any kid to read this book and not buy a notebook and spy on their neighbours. Harriet the Spy makes you want to be Harriet. I read this book every year and the sequel, The Long Secret, is just as good. My favourite scene in this book is the one where Harriet gets caught in Mrs. Plumber’s dumbwaiter. Dumbwaiters are cool and I wanted to find one I could spy from myself.
Re-reading this book recently made me sad about the state of children’s fiction today. As documented in the amazing Jezebel column “Fine Lines“, books about girls who aren’t fashion or boy obsessed are becoming rarer and rarer these days. I’m so grateful that my mom cared enough to research good children’s literature and read to us all the time. To this day I still love to be read to and that probably explains my audiobook obsession. Sometimes I wish I had kids of my own so I could have someone to mold with good books!
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
Another book that I read and re-read. This is the story of Winnie who gets lost in a forest and meets the Tuck family who drank from a spring that made them immortal. It’s sort of fantasy-ish and the overarching lesson is that it would be bad if everyone was immortal. I definitely have to re-read this one as I’m foggy on the details but what I do remember is that this book makes me feel warm inside.
Treasure Island - Robert Louise Stevenson
The greatest adventure book! Long John Silver! This is one my mom read to my sister and I and we wouldn’t let her stop until her voice was horse. It’s about pirates. And treasure. If you’ve never read it you should. There is a pretty good LibriVox recording of Treasure Island since this book is so old it’s in the public domain - throw it on you iPod! LibriVox is amateurs recording readings of books in the public domain. Their tag line is “Acoustical liberation of books in the public domain”. Check it out!
The Giver - Lois Lowry
In grade four I thought I was going to be a spy, in grade five I thought I was going to be an archaeologist, in grade six I thought I was going to be a writer. My sixth grade English teacher thought that I had talent and encouraged me a lot. She also read our class The Giver. I already loved science fiction but this book introduced me to the sub-genre that I’m still a big fan of - utopias and dystopias.
From wikipedia: “The novel follows a boy named Jonas through the twelfth year of his life. The society has eliminated pain and strife by converting to “Sameness”, a plan which has also eradicated emotional depth from their lives. Jonas is selected to inherit the position of “Receiver of Memory,” the person who stores all the memories of the time before Sameness, in case they are ever needed to aid in decisions that others lack the experience to make. As Jonas receives the memories from the previous receiver—the “Giver”—he discovers how shallow his community’s life has become.”
The Giver received the Newberry Medal for Children’s Literature (I’m slowly working my way through this list!) but also stirred some controversy because of it’s pretty heavy for kids, especially the end. One of my favourite books of all time.
Honourable mentions: The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The Bridge to Terabitia by Katherine Patterson, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor, Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
