The Independent (god bless its little prescriptive heart) has listed the 50 books every child should have read. As we know, the Education Secretary has said every child should read a book a week (with two weeks off for good behaviour, apparently). So this is only a year’s list.
But is it? Some of the books I don’t know — blame a North American childhood for my lack of Michael Morpurgo and Moomins; other books are after my time. But some just seem odd — two books by Benjamin Zephaniah? Is he really that good? And at the expense of, say, Madeleine L’Engle’s masterpiece, A Wrinkle in Time? Or the Little House on the Prairie series? Or one of my childhood read-it-to-deaths, E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler? No Noel Streatfeild (I’d go for White Boots over Ballet Shoes, though), no What Katy Did, no Pippi Longstocking, or Rumer Godden? My own favourite for months and months one year was William Pene du Bois’ The 21 Balloons (I was astonished as an adult to learn that Krakatoa was a real place, and had truly gone up in a volcanic explosion). And, as a good Canadian, I must put in a plea for Susannah of the Mounties (although you can keep that twerp Anne of Green Gables).
Well, here is the list, but I defy anyone to read it and not miss their own favourites. Because there is nothing as evocative as childhood reading recollected in tranquillity. Or even middle age…
1. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
2. Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
3. Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner
4. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
5. Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken
6. The Owl Service by Alan Garner
7. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
8. Moominsummer Madness by Tove Jansson
9. A Hundred Million Francs by Paul Berna
10. The Castafiore Emerald by Hergé
11. The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson
12. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
13. Just William books by Richmal Crompton
14. The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde
15. ‘The Elephant’s Child’ from The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
16. Treasure Island by R.L. Stevenson
17. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
18. The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono
19. The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy
20. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson-Burnett
21. Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah
22. Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
23. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
24. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
25. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein
26. The Tygrine Cat and The Tygrine Cat on the Run by Inbali Iserles
27. Carry On, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse.
28. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr
29. Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett
30. The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson
31. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
32. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
33. Mistress Masham’s Repose by T.H. White
34. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
35. How to be Topp by Geoffrey Willams and Ronald Searle
36. Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz
37. Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo
38. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
39. The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier
40. Animal Farm by George Orwell
41. Skellig by David Almond
42. Red Cherry Red by Jackie Kay
43. Talkin Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah
44. Greek myths by Geraldine McCaughrean
45. People Might Hear You by Robin Klein
46. Noughts and Crosses by Malory Blackman
47. Einstein’s Underpants and How They Saved the World by Anthony McGowan
48. After the First Death by Robert Cormier
49. The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
50. Beano Annual. A cornucopia of nutty, bad, silly ideas, tricks, situations and plots.