May is the month for Children’s Book Week, promoting a worthwhile activity: reading books. Since wired and wireless entertainment is now popular, what can be said in favor of books? We will start by noting that books are portable and require no batteries or WiFi connections, allowing readers to enjoy the outdoors on splendid summer days.
In addition, a child can read a book without parental supervision, unlike the Internet with its unsavory sites (of course, we don’t include the Almanac in the unsavory category!). Here are a few quality titles in children’s literature. Many books are parts of series; look for other books by the authors on this list.
FOR YOUNGER READERS (and listeners)
Aesop’s Fables.
Fairy Tales. Hans Christian Andersen
Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing. Judi Barrett.
The Berenstain Bears Go to School. Stan and Jan Berenstain.
Charlotte’s Web. E. B. White.
Frog and Toad Are Friends. Arnold Lobel.
The Frog Band and the Onion Seller. Jim Smith.
A Kindle of Kittens. Rumer Godden.
Little Bear’s Friend. Else Holmelund Minarik.
The Little Fur Family. Margaret Wise Brown.
The Little Wooden Farmer. Alice Dalgliesh.
Make Way for Ducklings. Robert McCloskey.
Millions of Cats. Wanda Gág.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Betty MacDonald.
Old Mother West Wind. Thornton Burgess.
Puss in Boots. John S. Goodall, illustrator.
The Red Fairy Book. Andrew Lang.
The Story About Ping. Marjorie Flack and Kurt Weise.
The Story of Babar. Jean deBrunhoff.
Stone Soup. Marcia Brown.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Beatrix Potter.
Winnie the Pooh. A. A. Milne.
FOR MID-ELEMENTARY GRADES
Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll.
A Bear Called Paddington. Michael Bond.
Big Red. Jim Kjelgaard.
The Borrowers. Mary Norton.
Children of the Covered Wagon. Mary Jane Carr.
Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective. Donald J. Sobol.
Five Children and It. Edith Nesbit.
George Washington. Ingri d’Aulaire and Edgar Parin.
Henry Huggins. Beverly Cleary.
The Jungle Book. Rudyard Kipling.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. C. S. Lewis.
The Little House in the Big Woods. Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Misty of Chincoteague. Marguerite Henry.
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Robert C. O’Brien.
Perrault’s Complete Fairy Tales. Charles Perrault.
The Adventures of Pinocchio. Carlo Collodi.
Rabbit Hill. Robert Lawson.
The Rescuers. Margery Sharp.
Robin Hood and His Merry Outlaws. J. Walker McSpadden.
The Story of Doctor Dolittle. Hugh Lofting.
Tales from the Arabian Nights. H. J. Dawood, translator.
Three from Catfish Bend. Ben Lucien Burman.
The Wheel on the School. Meindert deJong.
The Wind in the Willows. Kenneth Grahame.
FOR READERS IN GRADES 5 AND ABOVE
The Alligator Case. William Pène Du Bois.
The Adventures of Tintin. Hergé.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Mark Twain.
The Black Stallion. Walter Farley.
Daniel Boone. James Daugherty.
The Buffalo Knife. William O. Steele.
Caddie Woodlawn. Carol Ryrie Brink.
Children of the Fox. Jill Paton Walsh.
The Dark House of the Sea Witch. Joan G. Robinson.
Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte.
Five Boys in a Cave. Richard Church.
From the Earth to the Moon. Jules Verne.
Gulliver’s Travels. Jonathan Swift.
The Heroes. Charles Kingsley.
The Hobbit. J. R. R. Tolkein.
The Incredible Journey. Sheila Burnford.
Island of the Blue Dolphins. Scott O’Dell.
Ivanhoe. Sir Walter Scott.
Johnny Tremain. Esther Forbes.
Kidnapped. Robert Louis Stevenson.
Little Women. Louisa M. Alcott.
Lorna Doone. Richard D. Blackmore.
The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian. Lloyd Alexander.
My Friend Flicka. Mary O’Hara.
Rip Van Winkle and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Washington Irving.
Robinson Crusoe. Daniel Defoe.
The Secret Garden. Frances Hodgson Burnett.
The Slave Who Bought His Freedom. Karen Kennerly, ed.
The Small Woman. Alan Burgess.
Swallows and Amazons. Arthur Ransome.
The Swiss Family Robinson. Johann David Wyss.
The Sword and the Circle. Rosemary Sutcliff.
The Yearling. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
A Walk Across America. Peter and Barbara Jenkins.
The Wild Children. Felice Holman.