Children's Books to Inspire Reading and Foster Imagination
These books are aligned with Waldorf Education curriculum and principles. For more information on what I mean by that, please visit this page: What is Waldorf-Aligned?
Published 1979
Theme: Fantasy
Best for: Boys age 11-12
Almost written like a classic morality play, this amazing children’s book weaves a message about selfishness and pride without ever appearing terribly heavy-handed. The fantasy elements of the story, a boy finding himself in a story being written as he appears in it, brings the reader far away from the real world.
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 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 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 …
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…
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 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 …
The Wise Enchanter: A Journey Through the Alphabet Read more »
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 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 …