I included the entire Harry Potter series in my previous post about YA lit. I'm sure that seven-year-old me would have been able to read the whole series, but would have been slightly terrified, well, all the time. Hence listing just the first book for this post. I started reading the series when I was only slightly older than Harry Potter himself, which was part of why I enjoyed the books so much. I'm really excited to pass this book onto my offspring of a far, distant future. HPatPS does an excellent job of capturing the typical experience of preteens in a magical setting.
Sometime in my early days as a bookstore employee, I stumbled upon Rick Riordan's first series. Percy Jackson and the Olympians had the unfortunate luck of following shortly after Harry Potter, and thus appears to be a somewhat similar story. What is different about these books, however, is that they deal exclusively with Greek mythology. I have always loved mythology, so these books appealed to me straight away. Interestingly, Riordan wrote these books primarily for his son, to normalize ADHD (and also making typical ADHD qualities something to be celebrated).
I have always loved fantasy stories. I collected unicorn figurines when I was a child (and God bless my Mom for keeping them). I read this book so many times that I had most of it memorized (and could likely still complete the story in fill-in-the-blanks format). My greatest annoyance as a child was that Coville subtitled this book as "Book One of The Unicorn Chronicles", and never wrote a second book! Thankfully, sometime in my late teens, he started writing again and finished the final three books of the series. The opening sequence of the story is quite delightful.
I was a little late to the Narnia party, considering I read The Lord of the Rings far before I knew The Chronicles of Narnia even existed. Nevertheless, I think this is an excellent series for children of all ages, especially if you manage to acquire one of the illustrated versions (which I am fortunate enough to have, thanks to very generous parents). This series has the benefit of being long enough to keep kids reading, but has enough diversity to maintain interest. Were I to pick a favourite, it would likely be (oh-so-predictably) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
I imagine that most people of my generation read at least some Roald Dahl when they were kids. I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in second grade, and vividly remember writing journals from the perspective of gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde for my language arts class. All of Roald Dahl's books are quite wonderful, and are surprisingly still amusing to read as an adult. The Witches was always one of my favourites, perhaps because not many stories involve boys being turned into mice by witches.
This series, not unlike Harry Potter, is also appropriate for teen readers. I read this series sometime during high school, and then re-read parts of the series for a children's literature class during my undergrad. I find L'Engle's writing more fascinating by the day, simply because her approach to spirituality is so encouraging. The Time quintet is fairly unique as book series' go, considering it perhaps lends itself more to sci-fi than fantasy. As an aside, some of the earlier cover art is just plain weird. Thank you, 1970s; thank you very much.
This was required reading for one of my language arts classes in early middle school, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Reading about the unlikely plane crash and subsequent survival process of young Brian was a great alternative to all the fantasy I had been reading without sacrificing any of the adventure. I recently realized that Hatchet is the first book of five in a series, which is encouraging when most books for kids tend to be fantasy and/or sci-fi rather than (at least somewhat) realistic. Hatchet is a great book for young boys, or for any child who likes the outdoors.
Not unlike The Baby-Sitter's Club, this series has a seemingly infinite number of installments, which is excellent news for young readers who read extremely fast. The fact that this series was originally published in the early 1920s speaks pretty highly of the story. I admit that I don't recall any particular details about the series, aside from the fact that I loved it as a young child. Thankfully, this is a series that children of any gender will enjoy, which is the major downfall of other series' such as The Baby-Sitters Club.
Reading this book resulted in middle school me reading a lot of historical fiction. At this point in my life, I definitely didn't possess much knowledge about the holocaust (though, thanks to my Dad, I knew plenty about the first and second world wars), so Number the Stars was pretty enlightening. It is, of course, a heartbreaking book, but does an excellent job of introducing young readers to an important but painful part of history. This was another book I read as part of a language arts class, so many kids will read it in school (and for good reason).
One Christmas, my parents bought me a copy of Kristy and the Copycat (which happens to be the seventy-fourth book in the series). I was so excited to get my hands on a book about someone who shared my name, albeit spelled incorrectly. Soon thereafter, my Mom arranged with another friend's Mom to buy someone's entire collection of BSC books, which we shared ownership of. I absolutely loved these books, and I am so happy that the series is being reprinted to be more appropriate for 2012 readers (aka: pagers are replaced with cell phones).
--- chRistie
PS: Books listed = in no particular order (not even alphabetical).
