A List of Children's Classics

 

            Today's Snack: An after-school treat classic, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of cold milk! Try Vitamin D milk, especially if you haven't been out in the sunshine for a while.

 

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Supplies:

Print out the list of classics on this page and keep it throughout your K-12 schooling.

 

By graduation day, make a goal of reading a certain percentage of these books.

 

Write your goal down on this checklist, and remember to chart your progress.

 

Can you get around to 25% of them? 50%? All?

 

Set your goal, and stick with it. You know what they say about goals: you can never reach them if you don't take time to set them!

 

 

 

Classic children's literature? Yeah, right. Dusty, old books written hundreds of years ago? 'Sup wit' dat? Who needs 'em?

 

            You do, Buster. A K-12 education that skimps on classic books is a skimpy education, indeed.

 

Not only is it civilizing and fulfilling to be well-read, you learn how much history repeats itself. You see how today's problems are just new versions of the old ones. And you realize that the old stories that have stood the test of time over the centuries might just shine with the gold of wisdom that we can really use today.

 

            Who knew, for example, that the masterpiece that most people consider to be the greatest work of fiction ever written, Anna Karenina, by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, was about divorce and a dysfunctional family? Talk about relevant to today's society!

 

Or that French author Marcel Proust, whom some say was the most intelligent person who ever picked up a pen, was a special-needs kid, sick with asthma and confined to his bed? It turns out that his disability and long hours available to think and read might have SEEMED like a bad thing at the time, but turned out to be source of his tremendous insight and writing ability.

 

There are more and more resources out there to guide you to the "must reads" of childhood, and give you a taste of what might be missing in the school curriculum. Why are the classics so often missing from assigned reading in schools? Because of the rich language and vocabulary that is in these books, which is unfortunately too difficult for many children today to read.

 

But just because they don't MAKE you read the classics in school doesn't mean you can't read them on your own!

 

But which ones? There are hundreds from which to choose.

 

Among the best and most accessible guides to classic kiddie lit is a collection of excerpts from some of the greatest children's literature. It's called Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children, edited by William F. Russell. There's a sequel, too, More Classics . . . by the same editor.

 

One of the nation's best-loved experts on reading, Jim Trelease, endorsed these books. He said that he loved them because they prove there is an "access road to the classics that can be enjoyably traveled by five-year-olds and thirty-five-year-olds."

 

Russell was careful to include only those works of literature that are "right" for children with a certain "listening level." While the book cover says these are for children ages 5-12, the language is probably too difficult for anyone under age 12 to read on their own. But a teenage sibling or babysitter, or a parent, guardian or after-school program leader, can deliver these classics by reading aloud, and enjoy them very much, too.

 

If the work of literature is a novel, you don't get the whole book, of course, but Russell has taken key scenes from famous books, stories, poems and plays to immerse you in the imaginary worlds of each of these great authors.

 

(Source: Tables of content for Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children. If you're gung-ho on this, and it's great if you are, get the sequel, More Classics . . . by William F. Russell, and add that table of contents to this list. Note that titles in "quotation marks" are short stories or excerpts, and titles that are in italics are novels. Make friends with a librarian, and get help if you need it in locating these works of literature. Some of the short stories and poems might be in anthologies, which are collections of shorter pieces into one big source book. You might find several in one anthology. Or you can always buy Russell's book - it should still be available online.)

 

 

 

PRINT OUT AND KEEP THIS CHECKLIST

OF GREAT CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

 

By my high school graduation, I will read, or have read to me,

 

________% of these books.

 

 

 

 

Signature                                                                                        Date

 

 

 

Listening Level I (age 5 and up)

 

□ "The Ugly Duckling"

Hans Christian Andersen

 

□ "Androcles and the Lion"

Aesop's Fables

 

□ "The Early Days of Black Beauty"

Excerpt, Black Beauty, Anna Sewell

 

□ "Robin Hood and the Merry Little Old Woman"

Eva March Tappan

 

□ "How Arthur Was Crowned King"

Excerpt, Morte d'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory

 

□ "The Adventure of the Windmills"

Excerpt, Don Quixote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes

 

□ Readings from Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift

 

□ "Ulysses and the Cyclops"

Excerpt from The Odyssey by Homer

 

□ "The Golden Touch"

Adapted from The Wonder Book, Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

 

Listening Level II (age 8 and up)

 

□ "The Glorious Whitewasher

Excerpt from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

 

□ "The Ransom of Red Chief"

O. Henry

 

□Romeo and Juliet

Adapted from the play by William Shakespeare

 

□ "Rip Van Winkle"

Washington Irving

 

□ "Jim Baker's Bluejay Yarn"

Excerpted from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

 

 

Listening Level III (age 11 and up)

 

□ Excerpt from The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane

 

□ "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

□Excerpt from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain

 

□Excerpt from The Call of the Wild

Jack London

 

Poetry:

 

□ "Casey at the Bat"

Ernest Lawrence Thayer

 

□ "The Windmill"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

□ "Paul Revere's Ride"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

□ "The Highwayman"

Alfred Noyes

 

□ "The Charge of the Light Brigade"

Alfred Lord Tennyson

 

□ "If---"

Rudyard Kipling

 

□ "It Couldn't Be Done"

Edgar A. Guest

 

Holiday Favorites:

 

□ Passover:

"Pharaoh of the Hard Heart"

Exodus 12:1 - 13:16

 

□Easter:

"The Risen Lord"

Gospels of Mark 15 and 16, Luke 23 and 24, and John 19-21

 

□Halloween:

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:

Washington Irving

 

□Thanksgiving:

"A Prayer of Thanksgiving"

Robert Louis Stevenson

 

□ "Ezra's Thanksgivin' Out West"

Eugene Field

 

Christmas:

 

□ "A Visit From St. Nicholas"

Clement Clarke Moore

 

□ "The Gift of the Magi"

O. Henry

 

□ "A Christmas Carol"

Charles Dickens