100 books every child should read

I stumbled upon this wonderful recommendation in the Daily Telegraph of 100 books every child should read:

Younger Children:
The Twits, Roald Dahl
Burglar Bill, Janet & Allan Ahlberg
The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Judith Kerr
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, Beatrix Potter
Yertle the Turtle, Dr. Seuss
Fungus the Bogeyman, Raymond Briggs
The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None Of His Business, Werner Holzwarth & Wolf Erlbruch
Room on the Broom, Julia Donaldson
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
The Cat in the Hat, Dr Seuss
Charlotte’s Web, EB White
The Story of Babar, Jean de Brunhoff
Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne,

Middle Years:
Stig of the Dump, Clive King
Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfield
Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
The Borrowers, Mary Norton
Struwwelpeter, Heinrich Hoffman
The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
Danny, the Champion of the World, Roald Dahl
George’s Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
Underwater Adventure, Williard Price
Tintin in Tibet, Herge
The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales
Erik the Viking, Terry Jones
When the Wind Blows, Raymond Briggs
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, TS Eliot
The Iron Man, Ted Hughes
The Owl and the Pussycat, Edward Lear
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Graeme
The Worst Witch Collection, Jill Murphy
Peter Pan, JM Barrie
Mr Majeika, Humphrey Carpenter
The Water Babies, Charles Kingsley
A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett
I’m the King of the Castle, Susan Hill
The Wave, Morton Rhue
Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
Bambert’s Book of Missing Stories, Reinhardt Jung
The Firework-Maker’s Daughter, Philip Pullman
Tom’s Midnight Garden, Phillippa Pearce
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
The Silver Sword, Ian Serrallier
Cue for Treason, Geoffrey Trease
The Sword in the Stone, TH White
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursulla K LeGuin
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, JK Rowling
The Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis
His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
The BFG, Roald Dahl
Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome
Clarice Bean, Don’t Look Now, Lauren Child
The Railway Children, E Nesbit
The Selfish Giant, Oscar Wilde
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
Just William, Richmal Crompton
Jennings Goes to School, Anthony Buckeridge
Comet in Moominland, Tove Jansson
The Bad Beginning, Lemony Snicket

Early Teens:
Call of the Wild, Jack London
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
The Outsiders, SE Hinton
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Owl Service, Alan Garner
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, Mildren D Taylor
A Kestrel for a Knave, Barry Hines
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkein
War Horse, Michael Morpurgo
Beowulf, Michael Morpurgo
King Solomon’s Mines, H Rider Haggard
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
The Road of Bones, Anne Fine
Frenchman’s Creek, Daphne Du Maurier
Treasure Island, RL Stephenson
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
Junk, Melvin Burgess
Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee
The Go-Between, LP Hartley
The Rattle Bag, edited by Seamus Heaney & Ted Hughes
The Song of Hiawatha, HW Longfellow
Watership Down, Richard Adams
Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
True Grit, Charles Portis
Holes, Louis Sachar
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
Carrie’s War, Nina Bawden
The Story of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
The Lantern Bearers, Rosemary Sutcliffe


Hmmm, I’m not doing too well. I always thought of myself as a voracious reader, but maybe I read the wrong sort of books LOL. Out of the above list I only recall reading about 30 which may mean my essential reading is a bit down on the average. I did read more Dickens, Bronte and Durrell than they mention and I also read quite a bit of Austen, so maybe that ups my list a bit!

One book on the list, Comet in Moominland, brought back quite vivid memories of reading the whole series of these books. I don’t know how old I was but I clearly remember the books themselves and their illustrations. I may have to seek those out again for my children!

I don’t know if all these books are easily available here in Australia, but I am going armed with this list to the local library in a fortnight when school resumes and will see what I can locate.

I need to jump on the younger readers quickly as the girls have just turned seven! I also need to encourage my son to read more. He was a poor reader until the last couple of years when he has worked his way through The Secret Seven and The Famous Five. Having read all the volumes in these series that he could find, he was searching around for a book and saw The Golden Compass, which he is attempting to read. It is more of a novel for an older child – the print is small, the book is thick and the style of writing he is unaccustomed to, but I am happy to let him try.

How many of the above list have you read? Have they missed out on any books?


See the comprehensive listings with a short synopsis of each book here:

part 1 (younger children)
Part 2 (middle years)
Part 3: (early teens)