Children's Books to Inspire Reading and Foster Imagination
Published 1967
Theme: Adventure in New York City
Best for: Girls age 10-12
Here’s a very funny, easy to read, yet somewhat profound children’s book that I stumbled across in my local bookstore. Obviously others found it before me, as it is a Newberry Medal book.
Published 1973
Best for: 12 years and up
Theme: Fantasy
Five stars
After reading A Wind in the Door, I understand why the fantasy genre in a children’s book is so addicting. With skillful writing, such as L’Engle brings, you lose all sense of what is possible and what is not possible, or, as the teacher says in this book, What is real?…
First published 1931
Best for: Ages 8-12
Theme: Compassion
Five Stars
This story is so delicately written, with little poems prefacing each chapter, that your heart just opens more and more. The theme of sacrifice is presented in a very careful and thoughtful manner…
Published; 1995
Theme: Women’s Historical Fiction
Best for: Girls, age 12 and up
A wonderful book to use as class reading for bringing history, especially women’s history, alive. Set in fourteenth century England, the story of an impoverished orphan and her role in the society of the day is compelling…
by Arthur Ransome first published 1930. Imagine reading an exciting children’s book where perhaps many of the terms don’t make any sense, but it doesn’t matter in the least. As I follow the children’s adventures on their sailboats on a lake, I’m right there, even if I don’t know starboard from — what is the opposite? The adventures, and the well developed characters of the children and others is so entrancing, that details don’t really get in the way…
Published 1988
Theme: Animal Intelligence
Best for: ages 6 and up
Five Stars
“Mrs. Jane Tabby could not explain why all four of her children had wings.”In four small children’s books, Ursula Le Guin has created a very endearing set of cat characters with personality, adventure, and wisdom. This set of stories…
by E. B. White, published 1945. “Very good advice, Albert, but advice and law are not the same. Law is much more solemn than advice. Law is extremely solemn. Anybody else thing of a law for the world?”It’s not hard to believe that E. B. White started as a contributor of humor to the New Yorker. His writing style even in his children’s books is filled with that New Yorker sly humor that makes you chuckle. That’s for the adults. For the children, he’s just downright silly and gets away with it in great style. Stuart Little is a smiling, chuckling book all the way to the unexpected end. A great piece of writing by an iconic writer…
Published 1955
Theme: Imagination
Best for: Under 11
The series of five children’s books by Norton, beginning with The Borrowers, and continuing with the Borrowers Afield, Aloft, Afloat, Avenged…, are in a group by themselves. The imagination that Norton brings to the tales of these little people that live in houses, off the the lost items of humans, is so creative, that it seems like it must be true…
by E. B. White, published 1970. What could be more fantastical than a swan who can’t make his trumpeting sounds and so carries a trumpet. This wonderful image seems to real because E. B. White makes it so. The wonderful descriptions of nature, the lovely relationship between the boy Sam and the swan, and the feeling of life in the wild all create such a vivid experience that one forgets that perhaps a swan carrying a trumpet is make-believe..
by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published 1905. “Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it.” A Little Princess is one the best children’s books I’ve read so far. It turns out I’m not alone in my assessment, as it continually rates in the top 100 lists among teachers, education associations, and others. Illustrating through example the power of kindness and good thoughts, this book is a masterpiece…
By Edward Eager, first published 1956 “Their father always said how could he be sure there was magic, and besides, even if there weren’t any such thing as magic, wasn’t it pleasant to think that there might be?” It’s always …
first published 1957
“When he was about two years old, and had been a Cat About Town for some time, glorious in conquests, but rather too thin for comfort, the Fur Person decided that it was time he settled down.”When a friend loaned me this book by May Sarton, my first reaction was “I didn’t know Sarton wrote children’s books.” After reading it, my first thought was, “Is this really just for children?” as I loved it as an adult, especially a cat-loving adult. However, there is no doubt that it does meet the needs of children…
by Arthur Ransome, first published 1931. No author of children’s books gives children’s imagination the place of honor in the same way that Arthur Ransome does. Throughout the entire book, we live within the imaginative world that the four children (and their two friends) have created for themselves…
by Edward Eager, published 1954 “This summer, the children had found some books by a writer named E. Nesbit, surely the most wonderful books in the world. They read every one that the library had, right away…” If the children …
Published: 1942
Theme: Country Life
Best for: 9 to 12
“Wasn’t it a miracle to live in the country in spring? And to have a wonderful family that she was crazy about, and a house with a secrect room and a cupola…?” The second of four books about the Melendys, these four very street-savvy children are now quite at home roaming the forest…
Published: 1957
Theme: Imagination
Best for: 8 to 10
“After a while, when he saw that nothing was going to pounce on him and that he probably wasn’t going to be struck by lightning, he allowed his sobs to die down and turn into hiccups.” The first of several books about three children and their summer adventures, is an unusual children’s book, delighting in flights of fancy…
by Jeanne Birdsall, published 2005 “This is what made a book great, she thought, that you could read it over and over and never get tired of it.” The Penderwicks is another children’s book recommended by my young friend Meera. It …
by E. Nesbit, first published 1906. “Very wonderful and beautiful things do happen, don’t they? And we live most of our lives in the hope of them.” While the brilliant author Edith Nesbit may be best known for her liberal use of magic and fantasy, not all her books include magic. In this very likeable book, The Railway Children, we discover something even more important than magic…We discover that even in difficult situations, there is magic to be found right in daily life, if we only have eyes to see it…
Published: 1941
Theme: Growing Up in the City
Best for: 6 to 12
“The room in which they were sitting might have been called a playroom, schoolroom or nursery to most people. But to the Melendys, it was known as the Office.” In The Saturdays, the first children’s book in the series known as The Melendy Quartet, we are introduced to the four Melendy children, ranging in ages from six to thirteen…
by E. Nesbit, first published 1907 “There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs forever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real.” The quote for …
Published: 1973
Theme: The Value of Time
Best for: ages 10 to adult
“There’s a place like the one you visited in every living soul, but only those who let me take them there can see it, nor can it be seen with ordinary eyes.” If there was only one children’s book I could put on the list of must-read, yet hardly known, children’s books, it would have to be Momo. I fell in love with the book, despite the fact that when I first went to read it…
by A. A. Milne, first published 1927 “I found a little beetle, so that Beetle was his name, And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same” This second children’s book of poetry by Milne is actually my …
by A. A. Milne, first published 1924 “A bear, however hard he tries, Grows tubby without exercise…” At first glance, one might think that this, the very first children’s book by A. A. Milne, would be more appropriate for much …
by Shelley Davidow, published 2006 “Wisdom is fading in the world. Words are disappearing. The brightness in the sky is vanishing and the dark Cloud of Ignorance has grown suddenly dense.” If I could use only one book to introduce …
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by Gerald Morris, published 2005 “To have arrived for an indefinite stay in this luxurious castle, where she would wear the finest clothes and most of all get to know a real enchantress, was more than Luneta could ever have …
by Padraic Colum, first published 1920 Here’s a children’s book that not every young child will read, but having read it, I feel compelled to give it a place in the list of great children’s books. For sure, it is …
By Gerald Morris, published 1998 “To forgive the unforgivable is the breath of life in this world.” A brilliant retelling of some of the stories from Le Morte D’Arthur, author Morris begins his series of children’s books about knights with this …
by A. A. Milne, First published 1926. “Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear! Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear”Who among us doesn’t know the world of Winnie-the-Pooh? To read it is to be a child again, seeing the world with utter innocence and simplicity.
by P.L. Travers, first published 1935 “It was one of those mornings when everything looks neat and bright and shiny, as though the world had been tidied up over night.” If the way that your children know about Mary Poppins …
by Gerald Morris, published 2001 “As you have now learned, the things you achieve by your own mighty deeds have no value until they are thrown away. But the things worth keeping—those things are yours for the asking.” Parsifal’s Page …