Classics for children
Children’s classics. This list contains 40+ timeless classics to inspire young minds and transport young readers to new and unexplored parts of their imagination. There’s a range of adventure, mystery, fun, poetry, magical enchantment, historical drama, short stories, thought-provoking fables, and picture books – suitable to read to primary-aged youngsters, or for children aged 5-13 to read independently. This list features books by E.B. White, John Masefield, Somadeva, Roald Dahl, Michael Rosen, Jenny Nimmo, Benjamin Zephaniah, Vijaydan Detha, Rosemary Sutcliff, Jacqueline Woodson and Sane Guruji.
Classics for children – our recommendations
Talking Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah. 
The Box of Delights by John Masefield, illustrated by Quentin Blake. 
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. 
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, illustrated by Mini Grey. 
The BFG by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake. 
Chocolate Cake by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Kevin Waldron. 
The Canterville Ghost, The Happy Prince and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde. 
The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear edited by Holbrook Jackson. 
The Sword in the Stone by T.H White. 
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, illustrated by Jules Feiffer. 
Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, retold by Naomi Lewis. 
Grimms’ Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. 
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. 
Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah. 
The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois. 
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. 
The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. 
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, illustrated by Axel Scheffler. 
Smith by Leon Garfield. 
The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green. 
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. 
The Children of Green Knowe Collection by Lucy M. Boston. 
Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden. 
The Snow Spider by Jenny Nimmo. 
The Adventures of Professor Branestawm by Norman Hunter. 
Moondial by Helen Cresswell. 
The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper. 
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. 
Timeless Tales from Marwar by Vijaydan Detha. 
Sane Guruji by Shyamchi Aai. 
Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner. 
Little Bear Lost by Jane Hissey. 
Anne of Green Gables by L.M Montgomery. 
Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper. 
Heidi by Johanna Spyri. 
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. 
The Hobbit, Or, There and Back Again by J.R.R Tolkien. 
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. 
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. 
The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. 
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. 
Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner. 
Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. 
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. 
Tales from the Kathasaritsagara by Somadeva. Click the buttons below to purchase all of the books in this classics for children book list, as well as class sets of any of these books and many more, from Bookshop.org UK. Or buy the 20 most popular titles from this list from Amazon – ideal for gifts or your classroom library.
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Children’s classics – resources for teachers
- The Library of Congress offers free access to a repository of out-of-copyright classics, from Snow White to The Raven and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to The Secret Garden. The original covers and illustrations are fascinating.
- Teachwire has an interesting article for teachers about how to include classic children’s literature in your curriculum.
- BBC Teach offers a range of free videos by celebrities, each of whom explains how a classic children’s book sparked their love of reading.
- Sadie Nicholas writes in The Spectator about why adults should read children’s stories.
- Ella Claire presents a teenage opinion about the benefits of reading classics. ‘Get over your pride and prejudice about reading them’, she says in this Guardian feature. The Teen Mag also expressed similar views about teaching classics in schools.
- What makes a children’s book a ‘classic’? It’s not just books by dead people, according to Victor Watson who has some interesting answers in this insightful piece from Books for Keeps.
BISAC YAF009000 Children’s classic fiction | Thema YFA
