Classics of Children's and Young Adult Literature
Following our discussions about canon, the following is a list of children's and young adult texts (or those that have been appropriated as such) that we think children's literature scholars ought to have read. Some of the books will also appear on our genre-based lists. Obviously, many of the titles are problematic and/or contestable, and the list will never be complete. As this course evolves, we will be annotating this list with either discussion questions, assignments, and/or rationales of why these texts make the cut as classics, or as teachable texts, or why we think they should be allowed to die a quiet and unmemorialized death.
Adams, Watership Down
Aiken, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (sequels optional)
Alcott, Little Women
Alger, Ragged Dick
Armstrong, Sounder
Atwater, Mr. Popper’s Penguins
Baum, The Wizard of Oz (and sequels)
Blume, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
Boston, The Children of Green Knowe (sequels optional)
Brink, Caddie Woodlawn
Brooks, The Moves Make the Man
Burnett, A Little Princess
Burnett, Little Lord Fauntleroy
Burnett, The Secret Garden
Carroll, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
Cooper, The Dark is Rising
Cormier, I Am the Cheese
Curtis, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963: A Novel
Dahl, Roald
Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Oliver Twist
Dixon, original Hardy Boys books
Erdrich, The Birchbark House
Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy
Forbes, Johnny Tremain
Frank, Diary of Anne Frank
Gipson, Old Yeller
Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Gruelle, Raggedy Anne and Andy
Hamilton, The People Could Fly
Hamilton, The Planet of Jr. Brown
Hunt, Across Five Aprils
Johnson-Feelings, ed. The Best of the Brownie’s Book
Keene, original Nancy Drew books
Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (sequels optional)
Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking (sequels optional)
Lofting, Doctor Dolittle
Lowry, The Giver
MacDonald, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle
Macdonald, The Princess and the Goblin
MacLachlan, Sarah, Plain and Tall
Mahy, The Tricksters
Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (and sequels)
Myers, Monster
Nalyor, Phyllis Reynolds, Shiloh (sequels optional)
Nesbit, Five Children and It
O’Brien, Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH
O’Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins
Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia
Paterson, The Great Gilly Hopkins
Pearce, Tom’s Midnight Garden
Porter, Pollyanna
Raskin, The Westing Game
Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows
Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (and sequels)
Ryan, Esperanza Rising
Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
Sewell, Black Beauty
Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Spyri, Heidi
Stevenson, Treasure Island
Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry (sequels and prequels optional)
Tolkien, The Hobbit
Travers, Mary Poppins
Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days
White, Charlotte’s Web
White, Stuart Little
Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Wilder, Little House on the Prairie (and sequels and prequels)
Wyss, The Swiss Family Robinson
Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man
Zitkala-Ša, American Indian Stories