[LM_NET] What are your top ten books for schoolchildren to read?

[Katie Day <day.katie@GMAIL.COM>]

Several other listservs related to children and reading have been discussing
a recent Guardian (UK) newspaper article called "From Beatrix Potter to
Ulysses... what the top writers say every child should read"
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1698548,00.html
).

Then have a read of the original article from the Royal Society of
Literature Review, which is copied below.

See, in particular, Ben Okri's submission, "10 1/2 Inclinations" , which
should be posted in every (school) library.

[Many thanks to Pat Burns, an international school librarian in Luxembourg,
who e-mailed the RSL after reading the Guardian article and asked for the
original article and got permission to post it on
LIBRARY@LISTSERV.ECIS.ORGwhere I read it.  I thought it was well worth
passing on to others, so
contacted Pat and then the RSL and got permission to forward it further.]

--Katie Day
day.katie@gmail.com
katie.appleton.day@gmail.com
Singapore

================================================

   FROM THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE REVIEW

           A SHOT AT A CHILDREN'S CANON

 What should young people in twenty-first century Britain be encouraged to
read?

Anthony Gardner asks a clutch of Fellows to nominate their top ten books for
schoolchildren, while Katherine Duncan-Jones reports on an impassioned
RSL/QCA debate.

 The question of what a child should have read before leaving school has as
many answers as Watership Down has rabbit holes. For some people, indeed, it
is unanswerable: when asked to nominate ten works of literature for this
article, Wendy Cope replied simply, 'There are children who love reading and

there are people who go right through life without ever finishing a book. I
can't make a list that would be right for all of them. It depends on the
individual.'

 Nick Hornby was similarly pragmatic. 'I used to teach in a comprehensive
school,' he wrote, 'and I know from experience that many children are  not
capable of reading the books that I wanted them to read. This makes the kind
of list you propose impossible, because if I choose ten books  that I think
would be possible for all, it wouldn't actually be a list that I would want
to endorse. I think any kind of prescription of this kind is extremely
problematic.'

 Even among those who were prepared to have a stab, there was a general
reluctance to be bound by the rules. 'But this is difficult,'  complained
Philip Pullman.

'The myths and legends and fairy tales would be far better TOLD to the
children by a teacher who knew them well, than read in a  book.  And there's

no room for Oliver Twist, or Animal Farm, or the Sherlock  Holmes stories,
or...Difficult, did I say? Impossible! I can think of a  hundred stories and
poems and plays - a thousand - how can I possibly select? Why, I haven't
mentioned this - or that - and how could I have  left out so-and-so? The
first three titles [Finn Family Moomintroll, Emile and the Detectives, The
Magic Pudding] are personal favourites of mine, so I suppose - reluctantly -

that some other books might replace them; but...Impossible!'

 Victoria Glendinning thought it better to recommend writers rather than
specific books, offering only Alice in Wonderland and Catcher in the  Rye as

essential titles.

Anne Fine wondered whether she was allowed to choose her own books A Shame
to Miss, 1, 2 & 3 - 'Poetry collections for, respectively, younger, middle
and older children, compiled by me. It
 seems strange and immodest, but this "should have read before they leave
school" criterion is exactly why I put the three age-based collections
together in  the first place.'

 Ben Okri took a different tack altogether, preferring to offer '10½
Inclinations'. For those exercised about whether children should be pointed
in the direction of characters whose backgrounds are similar to their own,
or encouraged to let their imaginations roam freely, there  is an
unequivocal answer in his second inclination: 'Read outside your own nation,
colour, class, gender.'

 Maggie Gee chose books 'that I think would both show teenagers how
wonderful writing can be and also make them think more deeply about the
world they live in. I have, to a certain extent, chosen these books for
subject-matter rather than just for literary quality...I chose Cat's Eye,
for example, because I think it is one of the best fictional treatments of
bullying, which may be a particular concern with teenagers.' But, she
concluded, 'Let's be frank and say that if only all school-leavers had read
ten books, more or less any ten books, from start to finish, and thought
about them, we would be ahead.'

 PHILIP PULLMAN
 Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
 Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner
 The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay
 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
 The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens (or other good anonymous ballads)
 First Book of Samuel, Chapter 17 (the story of David and Goliath)
 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
 A good collection of myths and legends
 A good collection of fairy tales

 J. K. ROWLING
 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontė
 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
 Animal Farm by George Orwell
 The Tale of Two Bad Mice by Beatrix Potter
 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
 Hamlet by William Shakespeare

 ANNE FINE
 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
 The Once and Future King by T. H. White
 Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
 Stiff Upper Lip (or any other Jeeves book) by P.G. Wodehouse
 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
 Tristan and Iseult by Joseph Bedier
 The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
 The Hound of the Baskervilles (or another Sherlock Holmes story) by Sir
 Arthur Conan Doyle
 Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
 A Shame to Miss, 1, 2 & 3

 ANDREW MOTION
 The Odyssey by Homer
 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
 Hamlet by William Shakespeare
 Paradise Lost by John Milton
 Lyrical Ballads by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth Jane
 Eyre by Charlotte Brontė
 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
 Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
 Ulysses by James Joyce
 The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

 MAGGIE GEE
 The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
 Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
 Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
 The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
 The Red Queen by Matt Ridley
 Small Island by Andrea Levy
 Go Tell It On The Mountain James Baldwin
 Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times edited by Neil Astley
 High Windows Philip Larkin
 Cat's Eye Margaret Atwood

 VICTORIA GLENDINNING
 Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
 Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar or Antony and Cleopatra by William
 Shakespeare
 Far from the Madding Crowd or Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
 Some poems by W.B.Yeats , T.S.Eliot and Philip Larkin
 A novel by Ernest Hemingway
 A novel by Graham Greene
 A novel by J.G. Ballard
 A novel by Evelyn Waugh
 A novel by Martin Amis
 A novel by Margaret Atwood
 (c) The Royal Society of Literature 2006.

 BEN OKRI
 10½ Inclinations
        There is a secret trail of books meant to inspire and enlighten
 you. Find that trail.
        Read outside your own nation, colour, class, gender.
        Read the books your parents hate.
        Read the books your parents love.
        Have one or two authors that are important, that speak to you;
 and make their works your secret passion.
        Read widely, for fun, stimulation, escape.
        Don't read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later,
cautiously.
        Read what you're not supposed to read.
        Read for your own liberation and mental freedom.
        Books are like mirrors. Don't just read the words. Go into the
mirror.
 That is where the real secrets are. Inside. Behind. That's where the gods
dream, where our realities are born. 10½) Read the world. It is the most
mysterious book of all.
 (c) Ben Okri 2006. All rights reserved.

    Literature for Life
      13 APRIL 2005
   Philip Pullman, Joan Anim-Addo and Julia Parry were on the panel for
   the  RSL/QCA discussion, chaired by John Carey

KATHERINE DUNCAN-JONES reports
 'The habit of reading is caught, not taught.' At the RSL's discussion  of
'Literature for Life', held as part of the Qualifications and Curriculum
Authority's initiative to discuss the teaching of English over the coming
decade, this point - expounded eloquently by Joan Anim-Addo - was perhaps
the single one with which everyone in the room agreed. Yet how can any
English literature curriculum hope to build an environment within which as
many children as possible will indeed 'catch' this habit?

 A reassuring feature of the evening was its clear evidence that the
school-children of 2005, despite all the Key Stages and 'targets'  towards
which they are propelled, show no signs of being crushed or intimidated by
these somewhat Gradgrindian measurements. Both the six-minute film  which
preceded the panellists' presentations and the extended and wide-ranging
discussion which followed made it clear that today's children are both
relaxed and candid. While many expressed huge enthusiasm for reading in
general and certain books in particular (no, not Harry Potter), and  some
even championed the skills of grammar and punctuation, others spoke  just as

freely about their dislike either of reading or of (creative)  writing.

 A girl in the film who had been asked to write a short story in 45 minutes
provoked much comment from the adults on the panel, who, puzzlingly, seemed
horrified by the idea. From the chair, John Carey skilfully allowed such
balls to be tossed vigorously to and fro between older audience members and
the party of lively fifth-formers - or do I mean Year 10s? -  who occupied
the front two rows.

 Joan Anim-Addo, whose experience ranges from primary-school teaching to
lecturing at Goldsmith's College, also spoke compellingly about the value of
exposing children from a Caribbean background, as well as others, to the
rich variety of Caribbean writing in all genres. However, she told a
slightly disquieting story of how she dissuaded her own daughter from
studying English Literature at university. Was she hinting that even in
higher education formal study can damage the joy of reading?

 Julia Parry talked about what does and doesn't work in the class-room. She
had some harsh words for current GCSE syllabuses in which, as she put it,
the books, and especially the novels, 'are growing mould': too many of them
are American (Of Mice and Men and Catcher in the Rye were mentioned),
distinctly dated and altogether uncompelling. However, she is able to get
her pupils to engage deeply with what they have read through improvised
dramatisations, among other strategies. Her plea for far less externally
imposed regimentation and targets - as well as for much better chosen
literary material - was received with applause.

 Philip Pullman's approach was quite different. Neither he, nor any other
speaker, explicitly raised the question of how to encourage boys to read,
possibly because the schoolchildren in the audience happened to be girls.

 But the issue was implicit in his opening account of going into a classroom
where he spotted a graphic novel in a boy's school bag, a work that he
already knew, and, to the boy's surprise, praised for its narrative energy
and sophistication. Pullman's strong enthusiasm for visual imagery, whether
in the form of illustrations to Paradise Lost or graphic novels, was
exciting to witness, though it wasn't easy to see how such imagery could be
incorporated into the design of an English curriculum. Like most of the best
debates - and this was one of the liveliest evenings ever organised by the
RSL - we came away with more questions than answers. We should be grateful
to Sue Horner for  involving  the RSL in the QCA's current initiative.

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