Looking for ideas on literary classics that would be a good choice for young readers. I’m specifically thinking of 6th to 8th graders. Thanks!
Looking for ideas on literary classics that would be a good choice for young readers. I’m specifically thinking of 6th to 8th graders. Thanks!
To Kill A Mockingbird
That was the obvious one to me. I would like to introduce our youngest granddaughter to some of the really old classics, as in mythology, etcetera.
Oh.. u mean like Greek and Latin… In that case I’ve no idea..
Also ‘Anne of Green Gables’ would also b my suggestion
@Jesus ?
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens was one of my favorites in middle grade. Also Johnny Tremain, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Old Man and the Sea.
She has read some of the Narnia chronicles. I’d never thought of Old Man and the Sea. Perhaps I will introduce her to some of Steinbeck’s novellas and short stories.
@Suzzy my daughter has also enjoyed Swiss family Robinson, and treasure island. I’m trying to think of what else she’s read.
Some of the classics get a bit heavy with sex and murder etc
@Suzzy if she has read Narnia, I would say that the children’s fantasy works of George MacDonald (C S Lewis’s “master”) are a must read. Near the top of the list I’d put The Golden Key, The Princess and the Goblin, At the Back of the North Wind, The Wise Woman, The Day Boy and the Night Girl, and The Light Princess…but he wrote a ton of them!
Also, re. getting started on the ancient myths, there are children’s versions of them told by C S Lewis’s friend Roger Lancelyn Green. (Norse, Greek, and Arthurian tales, and some others.) They’re available in the Everyman Children’s Classics series, as are two of the MacDonald ones I mentioned above-At the Back of the North Wind and The Princess and the Goblin.
Correction to my post above: RLG’s books are available in Puffin classics, it’s only his Arthurian and Robin Hood tales, I think, that are published in the Everyman hardback classics.
Oh! I wish I had read Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting back then..
Little Women
Treasure Island is a riproaring tale.
Treasure Island brings back memories for me. When I was a kid, the local spinster librarian didn’t think that I could read Treasure Island. She wouldn’t let me check it out. I would go every day to the library and when I was done, would hide it in a different place on the shelves to be found the next day. She finally gave up and let me check it out! I read it just fine.
Love Treasure Island, but Kidnapped is arguably even better.
@David Not read Kidnapped. Adding it to the list (the ever increasing list…)
A tale of two cities, or maybe even A Christmas Carol
Greek Mythology was my first love! Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (1942) by Edith Hamilton.
Try something fictional to strengthen their imagination
The Hobbit!
Little Women
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
I read The Pearl, Travels With Charley, and The Red Pony in school in those grades. A recent classic, My Brother Sam is Dead, is a good one to read while studying the American Revolution.
Wow!!!! The Red Pony… Happy that u mentioned it!!!! I have read quite a lot of books, but no book has captured my imagination as much as this one… Even after 6 years, still I wonder how it would be to own a horse in the woods in a mountain… Far from all this Madding Crowd ??
Got my first pony at age 2 and have been a captive ever since. I read and watched everything about horses: National Velvet, My Friend Flicka, Misty of Chincoteague, Black Beauty, The Black Stallion, etc.
Soooooo envy u….. You’ve basically lived my dream life!!!!!!
And thank you for your suggestion about horse themed books.. what do you think I must read first
@Jesus, start with the early ones: Black Beauty and National Velvet. Worth seeing the Elizabeth Taylor movie (National Velvet), too.
I read lord of the flies and Fahrenheit 451 in 7th grade. They were great experiences.
Suzzy Thomas ~ Nearly anything by Steinbeck that is not too long, and some by Hemingway (Nick Adams stories in particular). The Giver is the start of a series that your readers may already have been exposed to. Ender’s Game is wonderful. I highly recommend the annual picks by the Young Adult Library Service Association – and they go back for many years (you don’t need to be a librarian to go on that site). These are books that groups of young readers nominate and then select from ALL the nominations every year (it’s not adults choosing for them). http://www.ala.org/yalsa/best/
By the way, I was awarded a grant by my school district to buy books on those lists, and I stocked my own classroom “library” that my students used to check out books for their book reports. They loved it.
I loved HG Wells when I was a kid: Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Time Machine. Watership Down is great. I could see Ender’s Game being a hit, and I think a comparative reading of The Hunger Games and “The Lottery” and “The Most Dangerous Game” short stories would be fun. Octavia Butler’s work might be cool. I’ve only read Kindred so far, but I’ve heard her other works are amazing, too.
I just ordered her a boxed set of the Hercule Poirot books by Agatha Christie, boxed set of Steinbeck’s short stories and novels and The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe. I also got The Old Man and the Sea by Hemmingway. Her birthday is coming up, but will keep these other suggestions for later. Sometimes I just buy my grandgirls books for no special occasion at all….just for happy reading!
The Hobbit? The Narnia books? I loved the Little Women, What Katy Did, Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie series when I was that age, but I am female, and maybe boys would like them less?
Philip Pulman books are great for young readers.
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck I suppose. It s a good coming-of-age book
As a kid, I loved the Edgar Allan Poe short stories, the Sherlock Holmes stories, My Life and Hard Times, the Anne of Green Gables series, Black Beauty, Around the World in 80 Days, White Fang, Call of the Wild, The Jungle Book (particularly the story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”), Bulfinch’s Mythology, and early Melville works like Typee. Moby-Dick would be too hard to for students of that age, but his early works are less philosophically oriented and are just straightforward narratives of life at sea, often based on his own experiences. For example, Typee is a biographical novel about the time that he and a companion jumped ship and lived in the Marquesas for a few weeks, which for dramatic purposes Melville stretches to a stay of several months.
My daughter is around the grade level and here is her school book list: Pearl, Of Mice and man; Lord of the flies; Animal farm; And there were none; the tree grows in Brooklyn; To kill a mocking Bird; Romeo and Juliet; Tuesday with Morris; American Born Chinese; I know why the caged bird sings; the giver quartet; the Watsons going to Birmingham.
In addition, the kids love to read many good choices from the Newbery Medal list. Walking two moons, Bridge to Terabithia, etc.
We taught all the Newbery books or offered them for literature circles in grades 3-8. As an adult, I enjoyed them as much as did the kids.
Never Cry Wolf (Farley Mowat), Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) and Last of the Mohicans (James Fennimore Cooper).