I was going through my files and cleaning out drawers when I ran across this list of "Best Books for Children." I sat back and thought, "I wonder how many children read books these days?"
Our children were in school during the 1970 and 1980's. We made regular trips to the public library. The children had library books to read from school also. Each night before bedtime we sat on the living room couch and read for 15 minutes.
I hope you enjoy this list of quality books and encourage your children and grandchildren to read everyday.
The Children's Literature Association, an International organization of teachers, librarians, authors and publishers have put together a list of the 10 children's books written in America in the past 200 years which are of the most enduring quality. They are:
1. Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White (all ages)
2. Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak (4-8 yrs)
3. Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain (10 and up)
4. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (10 and up)
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (10 and up)
6. The Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (6 and up)
7. Johnny Tremaine, by Esther Forbes (10 and up)
8. The Wizard of Oz, by Frank Baum (8 and up)
9. The Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (6 and up)
10. Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell (12 and up) amd Julie of the Wolves, by Jean George (12 and up) These two tied for 10th place.
The following list is from the 100 Best Books for Children.
First Rhymes and pictures:
Picture Books (4 vol.) Randolph Caldecott, illustrator
ABC Bunny, Wanda Gag
Lavendar's Blue (Mother Goose), compiled by Kathleen Lines
Picture and Picture-Story Books:
Golden Goose Book by Leslie Brooke
Peter Rabbit series by Beatrix Potter
The Christ Child As Told by Matthew and Luke, Maud and Miska Petersham
First Fantasy-for Reading Aloud:
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
The Story of Doctor So-Little by Hugh Lofting
Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Lorenzini (pseud. C Collodi)
Mary Poppins by Pamela J. Travers
More Fantasy-beauty, wisdom and humor:
Peter Pan by Sir James M. Barrie
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Tales from America:
The Favorite Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris
Yankee Doodle's Cousins by Anne Malcolmson
The Rootabagas Stories by Carl Sandburg
The World's Great Imaginative Literature:
The Fables of Aesop by Aesop
It's Perfectly True and Other Stories by Hans Chrisitian Andersen
Arabian Nights: Their Best-Known Tales edited by Kate Douglas Wiggen and Nora A. Smith
Children and Families:
Hans Brinker: Or, the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge
Heidi by Johanna Spyri
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
"Funny" Books:
The Peterkin Papers by Lucretia Hale
Ben and Me by Robert Lawson
Homer Price by Robert McCloskey
Adventures in Strange Lands:
The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Fiction for Older Boys and Girls:
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 by James Fennimore Cooper
They Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by James Verne
Great Lives and Great Events:
Daniel Boone by James H. Daugherty
George Washington's World by Genevieve Foster
Abe Lincoln Grows Up by Carl Sandburg
"An Inheritance of Poetry":
Complete Nonsense Book by Edward Lear
When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne
A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
Great Religious Writings:
The Tree of Life by Ruth Smith
