Friends and cousins often ask me to recommend books for
their children. Actually, I’ve been asked for recommendations for adults as
well, but that is more difficult because adults have more specific preferences,
and I haven’t read a wide enough range to make suggestions according to their
taste. Kids, on the other hand, haven’t found their preference yet, and I want
to inculcate in them a love for reading first. My approach towards this purpose
is to expose them to interesting stories, including a mix of time-tested
classics, contemporary popular works, humorous stories, and empowering tales.
Since Sid, as well as many of the kids of my friends, are
8-10 years old, this post is targeted for this age group.
If the child hasn't read much yet, you can start with
collections of stories from Panchtantra, Jataka tales, Akbar-Birbal, Tenaliraman etc. Sid
also enjoyed Suppandi (from Tinkle) very much. Stories of Indian gods and
goddesses, and Mahabharata and Ramayana also interest kids. I think these are
good starting point for our children, before exposing to western stories.
Several publishers have several collections of such stories, Om Books is one of
the prominent ones that have both physical and online presence.
Ruskin Bond has been a favorite of kids for several decades, children also love story collections by Sudha Murty.
- Grandma's Bag Of Stories, The Magic Drum And Other Favourite Stories, The Magic of the Lost Temple (Sudha Murty)
- The Ruskin Bond Children's Omnibus, The Blue Umbrella (Ruskin Bond)
Amar Chitra Katha series is also commendable. I myself grew up reading them, and a large part of the Indian history, mythology, folk tales, etc I know today, I owe to these books. The added advantage is that they are published not only in English and Hindi, but also several regional languages.
Some of the children’s classics that have remained favorites for years and through generations include:
- The Secret Garden, A Little Princess (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
- Mary Poppins (P. L. Travers)
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, The Witches (Roald Dahl)
- Pippi Longstocking series (Astrid Lindgren)
- Charlotte's web (E. B. White)
- Famous Five series, Secret Seven Series, Naughtiest Girl series , The Faraway Tree, The Adventures of the Wishing chair (Enid Blyton)
- The hundred dresses (Eleanor Estes)
- Winnie the Pooh (A. A. Milne)
You can also buy abridged versions of classics. Several
publishers have brought out versions of classics abridged and retold, for
different age groups. For this age group (and younger), I liked Ladybird
Classics best - they have beautiful
color illustrations and glossy paper. Some of my favorite classics are:
- The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling)
- Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift)
- Treasure Island (R. L. Stevenson)
- Peter Pan (J. M. Barrie)
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum)
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
- Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)
- Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Jules Verne)
- Around the World in Eighty days (Jules Verne)
- The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)
Few of the new-age books popular amongst children are:
- Five Children and It (E. Nesbit)
- Geronimo Stilton series
- Wimpy Kid series (Jeff Kinney)
And I love the fact the current focus on empowering stories
for girls, far removed from the traditional damsel-in-distress fairy tales.
- Don't Kiss the Frog: Princess Stories with Attitude (Fiona Waters)
- Girls Who Rocked the World (Amelie Welden, Michelle R. McCann)
- Journey to the river sea (Eva Ibbotson)
I highly appreciate the effort of the site “A Mighty Girl” (www.amightygirl.com)
in this aspect – they regularly publish the stories exceptional (and yet not so
well known!) women, and have created a great resource site to enable and
encourage girls. I would recommend parents of all kids, especially girls, to
follow this site.
More resources and
pointers:
Goodreads site has several lists for books for children.
Here are the ones I liked best, there is (unsurprisingly) quite an overlap
amongst these.
You can also find list recommendations by age groups, e.g.:
From the A Mighty Girl site, you can select books by age,
genre, subject, etc.
1 comment:
Wow..thanks a lot for this concise list...have been trying to figure out this for a while. ...
If you could share the same for our age group too����
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