I’m 28 and 17 weeks pregnant with my first child, a girl. Over the last couple years I’ve been building up a family library from used book stores,etc and thinking a lot about the books I loved as a child/teen/ young adult.
After thinking about of it, I’m not sure all of those novels really have the messaging I’d want to pass along to my daughter (ie twilight, maybe?) even though I read them and loved them and turned out mostly fine.
What books did you grow up reading that you loved and think would be great for any growing kid/tween/teen to read that have stood the test of time? And what ones should we leave behind?
by makeplanefly
7 Comments
– Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon by LM Montgomery.
– Neverending Story by Michael Ende
– Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Bridge to Terabithia (might still be traumatized)
Ella Enchanted
Island of blue dolphins
Have not been able to convince my kids to read these but I savored as a kid. Each kid has their own tastes in what they enjoy. Some of my daughter’s favorites
Savy
Wonder
Holes
True meaning of smekday
Remarkable
Animorphs is pretty intense but has solidly great messaging.
For younger children, Frog and Toad.
I do think that it’s important for children to read books that maybe aren’t so good so that they can develop critical thinking skills and recognize when they shouldn’t internalize a book’s messaging. This is a bit extreme but my parents read Twilight with me so we could talk about the choices Bella was making. Im hindsight there were a lot of love stories I read as a kid that I don’t think did me any favors.
Dealing with Dragons series. (Middle grade)
Ramona Qumby books (7-11 would be my recommended age)
The Westing Game (middle grade)
Here are the books I saved for my daughter (although my son will likely read them, too).
Young kids:
Munsch’s The Paperbag Princess
School-age readers:
White’s Charlotte’s Web
Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (and the whole Wallace family cycle – 5 books altogether)
Kit Pearson’s War Orphan Trilogy
L.M. Montgomery’s Anne series (although only the first 4 stand up – after she gets married, it gets rather dull) and Emily series
Tolkien’s The Hobbit
Teenagers:
Austen’s Sense and Sensibility
Diary of Anne Frank
Tolkien’s LotR
Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale (I was a rather dystopia obsessed Xennial)
Congrats! I have a 3 year old daughter and we have loved trips to the library every week. We’ve found books we love that aren’t necessarily the classics everyone talks about. And I can cater to whatever special interest she has at the moment.
To answer your specific question. For babies we love the Todd Parr books. The colors are striking and the message is simple. Toddler/preschooler check out the book Paper Bag Princess.
Congrats, it must be an exciting time for you.
TBH I collected a heap of MG/YA books for my kids when they were babies and by the time they were old enough to read them they’d become “Mum’s old books” and didn’t hold much interest. I love the idea of a family library, but unless you have a bookworm who will read anything including old classics, it may not get used. They’ll be teens in the 2040s and who knows what the “in” YA trend will be then?! 😆
That said, I’d love to have shared The Penderwicks series with my daughters, if only I’d known about the books before mine were teenagers (recommended reading age 8-12, with the later books tackling more mature concepts). I’d also include some older classics that can be read as a child as well as an adult: The Hobbit, Bridge to Terebithia, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, We Have Always Lived In The Castle, I Capture The Castle, and Howl’s Moving Castle (ha ha, didn’t mean to theme those last 3!)