Book talk

[snacky]

bedlamsbard linked to a list of 50 Books For An Eleven Year Old.

It's a pretty good list, but I found myself being critical of both the amount of "boy books" on it (interesting, because the creator of the list is a father of two daughters) and of the amount of more recent books that aren't all that great, imo.

So of course, I made my own list. :D

If you need my qualifications: I was (in my own childhood) and still am a voracious reader of children's books, and I was a children's bookseller for several years.

I kept it geared towards 11 year olds (some are age appropriate for younger kids too, and I don't think there's anything on this list too old for an 11 year old). I tried to keep a mix of old and new books in here (some are Newbery award winners, some are just classics). There probably could be more new books, I admit, because I added some old favorites of mine which I feel are still worthwhile. I also tried not to stack it by genre - there should be a decent mix of fantasy, mystery, historical, horse, dog, humor, drama, boy and girl books on here (although I admit it probably skews more towards "girl books").

So, fifty books for 11 year olds, in no particular order:

1. A Wrinkle in Time (and the rest of the Time Quartet) by Madeleine L'Engle
2. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
3. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
4. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
5. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
6. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson-Burnett
7. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
8. Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder
9. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
10. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
11. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
12. Half Magic (and other books) by Edward Eager
13. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
14. Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery
15. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
16. Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson
17. Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
18. Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
19. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
20. A Series of Unfortunate Events series by Lemony Snickett
21. The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling
22. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
23. Holes by Louis Sachar
24. Percy Jackson & the Olympians series by Rick Riordan
25. The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper
26. The Melendy Family series by Elizabeth Enright
27. Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes
28. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
29. Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, by Judy Blume
30. Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
31. The Outsiders by SE Hinton
32. 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith
33. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
34. Call of the Wild by Jack London
35. Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry
36. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
37. National Velvet by Enid Bagnold
38. The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
39. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott
40. The D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths
41. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary (I'm picking one of her best books, but I think they're all worthwhile)
42. The Watsons Go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis
43. The Egypt Game, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
44. All of a Kind Family (series) by Sydney Taylor
45. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
46. Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
47. Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck
47. Ballet Shoes (and others) by Noel Streatfeild
48. The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton
49. Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field
50. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones



Okay, it was super hard to pick just 50 and I kept crossing things off the list. Feel free to tell me your essential books for 11 year olds in comments!

Comments

From midgetinvasion on twitter

[(Anonymous)]

It's a little young for 11, but Number the Stars is a good one.

Others I'd add: My Side of the Mountain, and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

Re: From midgetinvasion on twitter

[snacky]

All good ones, and all ones I crossed off this list! I should have made it a top 100 list. :)

[torachan]

It's really hard for me to imagine a list of books like this for an eleven-year-old, because the ones on this list that I read as a kid, I read mostly in early elementary school. By eleven/twelve, I was reading mostly adult books.

From midgetinvasion on twitter

[(Anonymous)]

I think that for those of us that were advanced little bookworms that is true. I was reading Stephen King by the time I was 12. However, for your average reader, it is a pretty accurate list.

E.g.-my second grade daughter is like me (and you), and reads anything and everything she can get her hands on. She's already read a lot of this list. My son is 11, and has not. He's just never liked reading until now, and has only started reading through Harry Potter recently.

Re: From midgetinvasion on twitter

[torachan]

Sure. But what I meant was, I don't think I could make a list like this, because I have no idea what would be appropriate for what age.

[snacky]

I had to keep reminding myself, "Just because you read The Thorn Birds and John Irving at eleven doesn't mean they belong on this list." :D

[lilacsigil]

I think it really depends on the 11-year-old! Things I was reading at 7 I would never give to my 7-year-old nephew because, while he loves reading (and has read quite a few books on this list), he gets scared more easily than I did. Then again, I ended up with a lifelong fear of nuclear apocalypse from reading YA nuclear holocaust survivor books at far too young an age, so maybe he's doing better in his choices than I did!

[snacky]

*nodnod* Yeah, I really tried to keep this fairly... hmmm, I don't want to say "generic" because that makes it sound boring and I don't think these books are boring.

But for the most part, these are books I'd hand to any eleven year old without too many qualms. There are some I'd qualify (don't read this if..) or might needs some parental explanations - for example, the Little House books and The Outsiders - but I think mostly everything is handled age appropriately.

I, personally, was ruined for John Irving books by reading his books at age eleven. Bears! Orphans! Wrestling! Incest! Prostitutes!

[crantz]

I, personally, was ruined for John Irving books by reading his books at age eleven. Bears! Orphans! Wrestling! Incest! Prostitutes!

Two of these things are not like the others, two of these things just don't belooong

[snacky]

"Orphaned incestuous prostitutes wrestling bears!" is the theme of every John Irving novel ever.*

*just kidding. But it could be.**

**of course, some of the prostitutes or bears would have to be maimed in some way.***

***loss of an eye, or a tongue, or a limb. Or a peen.****

****You think I'm making this up, but DON'T YOU EVER READ JOHN IRVING, IS WHAT I'M SAYING.

[msilverstar]

Yay! I have an 11-year-old who reads a lot both online (mostly web comics) and off. More book lists are good!

[snacky]

Yay! One thing I tried to do was to pick authors that had other great books, so if she likes one on the list, chances are very high that the author has others she'd like.

[st_aurafina]

Excellent list! I'd add a couple of Australian classics, if I knew the eleven year old in question was an Aussie: Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park, Storm Boy by Colin Thiele, The Silver Brumby by Elyne Mitchell, The Nargun and the Stars by Patricia Wrightson. Oh, maybe the Billabong books, too. (Wow, you can tell I'm forty this year from this list. Nothing older then the 1980's...)

I wish, wish, wish I'd read The Dark is Rising as a kid. I would have loved to have grown up carrying that story with me.

[snacky]

Hee, yes! I think my age shows in a lot of the books I picked too. My number one criteria was that I had to have read and loved them all.

Oh, that was one of my favorites as a kid. Such a great story.

[(Anonymous)]

Great list, snacky! I agree with most all of your choices on here, and I only WISH that my students at that age would read these books rather than the ones they do (or, worse still, not reading at all). A couple personal favorites that I love for that age group: Where the Red Fern Grows and, more for its inherent value as a book than a highly enjoyable plot, Tuck Everlasting. Christopher Paul Curtis is just an AMAZING writer in general: Bud, Not Buddy is also a great book that deals with some pretty tough issues. The middle school teacher approves. :)

~Kate (writeonkate)

(One sticking point- I'm gonna have to disagree with you about Tom Sawyer, mostly because when I attempted to teach it to 13 year olds, they had this look that was more glazed than a Krispy Kreme donut. For the right kid, it'd work, but I'm afraid America's youth today gets too caught up in literal meaning to make much sense of the book.)

[snacky]

Tuck Everlasting was a hard one! I kept putting it on the list and taking it off. I love it myself, but I know it's a hard sell for kids. And yeah, I love Christopher Paul Curtis! I like The Watsons Go To Birmingham just a hair more than Bud Not Buddy which is why that made the list. And I also look at the list as a jumping off point too (it's the children's bookseller in me) - if you like this book by this author, you're going to want to try his other ones!

Oh, I went back and forth on Tom Sawyer too. In the end I kept it on there, because I had a teacher who read it out loud to my class when I was a kid, and I remember how funny it was and how much we loved it. But yeah, you're right that it's the toughest sell on the list.

[rthstewart]

You and I have talked books before and I so appreciate this list. I do have a boy reader who 1) really prefers BOY books, with boy point of view characters and 2) just because he is reading at a high school level does not mean he is ready for that level of sophistication, whether in terms of mature content or horror. You only read special books for the first time, once, and so what is the rush, you know? There are some here that we've not tried and will do so and it's very exciting to have this list as a starting point.

[snacky]

It's harder because most boys won't read "girl books" while most girls will happily read both "girl books" and "boy books."

Books from the list that I'd really recommend, even with a girl-POV, for boys:

A Wrinkle in Time
The Secret Garden
Half Magic (shifting POVs from different kids in the books)
The Melendy Family series (shifting POVs from different kids in the books)
The Diamond in the Window (shifting POVs from different kids in the books)
Island of the Blue Dolphins
Ghosts I Have Been (girl POV, but its companion book, The Ghost Belonged to Me, is fantastic and a boy POV).

[bedlamsbard]

I didn't know a lot of these were books! (Like 101 Dalmations and Mary Poppins. Huh, who knew? Not me, apparently.)

I have still only read 25 of these, with two I can't remember if I read or not. (Clearly, if I did, they didn't make much of an impression on me.) I always recommend Tarzan, although at this point I don't know if it's because Edgar Rice Burroughs is actually good for that age level or because that's the single author who made the biggest impression on me from the ages of birth to entering fandom. (So, birth to eleven, actually. *cough*) But I was read to by my dad, so a lot of the books I grew up with are from a good two generations or more before mine.

I would probably add the Prydain Chronicles and the Nancy Drew books. And Julie of the Wolves! And The Blue Sword. Okay, I tend a lot more towards fantasy and adventure, big surprise. :) (And I have no idea what's actually age appropriate, because again: at age eleven I was devouring the Diana Gabaldon books.)

[snacky]

Surprise books! :D

You bring up a good point, in that each kid is different and each would enjoy something different. Honestly, one of the best parts of my job as a children's bookseller was finding out what books the kid had already read, and then trying to figure out where to go from there. So if I had a wee!Bed in front of me, telling me she liked Tarzan, I would have gone on to rec Treasure Island or King Solomon's Mines or Swiss Family Robinson. I also tried to keep this list with easily accessible/in print books.

I admit to personal preference in a few slots: Julie of the Wolves didn't make it because Island of the Blue Dolphins did, and those two are similar books in my mind. Nancy Drew and Prydain and The Blue Sword probably would have made a list of 100, rather than 50.

[cofax7]

Hey, I read 32 of these! ::polishes nails::

Is that Richard Peck the same guy who wrote The Day No Pigs Would Die? That was a good book.

And I have vivid recollection of the D'Aulaire book of myths: the one in my elementary-school library had a yellow cover, and it was really big. And it had a picture of Apollo in his chariot on the cover.

Lemme see, other essential books: Something by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, like The Golden Goblet. More animal books, like Big Red by Jim Kjellgard. The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff, or Warrior Scarlet or The Shield Ring. Oh, My Friend Flicka, which is one of the rare horse books that ought to get boys interested, since it's really all about fathers and sons.

Maybe some Tamora Pierce? If she were publishing when I was 11, I would have eaten her stuff up with a spoon. Also Diane Duane's So You Want to Be A Wizard series, which is like, the ultimate wish-fulfillment fantasy for smart geeky science-oriented kids.

[snacky]

Robert Newton Peck wrote A Day No Pigs Would Die. Different Peck! :D

Yes, I loved that D'Aulaire book. I used to check it from my grammar school library every week.

I did have Rosemary Sutcliff on here, but she had to go to make way for Harriet the Spy. I thought The Black Stallion worked in the "boy horse book" slot, but My Friend Flicka is good too!

Tamora Pierce and Diane Duane, both good!