Having read Andy Miller’s ‘The Year of Reading Dangerously’, a book in which he changes his life by reading fifty classic books, I’ve been forced to take a long hard look at my own reading habits. Like most people I am not entirely honest about the books I read. Sometimes it’s just easier to say I’ve read a book to ease a conversation along, rather than kill it stone dead with an embarrassing confession that I’ve not read To Kill a Mockingbird or the Lord of the Rings (which of course I have*.)

It’s just so much easier to lie about reading Jane Austen than it is to actually read Jane Austen. ‘Oh yes I’ve read Emma. Didn’t get on with it.’ Didn’t get on with the first page more like. I’m pretty happy being a literary liar, it’s served me well. But Miller’s book did implant in me the idea that perhaps I’m missing out on a lot of good books. So I’ve drawn up my own ‘list of betterment’: Fifty children’s books I really should have read but haven’t. I’ll do the adult version of this challenge when I grow up.

From a long list of around 80, a quarter of which I’m ashamed to admit I already own, I’ve come up with this final selection of books for children (as well as some adult books like Gormenghast which are widely read by young adults) .

What’s interesting looking down the list is how close it is to many of the ‘Greatest Children’s Books Ever’ lists that appear from time to time. As many of my favourites never appear on those lists, I’m a little suspicious about many of the books that do. Are they there because they’ve always been there? Do children really read them? Maybe people choose them because they’re improving? Maybe. Or I could be missing out on something revelatory, a book that saves my life.

So here goes (please don’t judge me too hard).

1.  I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
2.  The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula le Guin
3.  Blackhearts over Battersea by Joan Aiken
4.  Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake
5.  The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
6.  The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
7.  Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
8.  Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stephenson
9.  The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
10.  Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
11.  The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley
12.  Watership Down by Richard Adams
13.  Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer
14.  The Changes Trilogy by Peter Dickinson
15.  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
16.  Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
17.  The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
18.  Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson
19.  Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo
20.  Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
21.  A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley
22.  LIfe: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet
23.  The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
24.  Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
25.  Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang by Ian Fleming
26.  The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper
27.  Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd
28.  Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
29.  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
30.  What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge
31.  The Family of One End Street by Eve Garnett
32.  Are you there god? It’s me, Margaret by Judy Blume
33.  The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
34.  The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
35.  The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt
36.  The Mouse and his Child by Russell Hoban
37.  Smith by Leon Garfield
38.  Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
39. The Princess and the Goblin by George Macdonald
40.  Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
41.  Emil and the detectives by Erich Kastner
42.  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
43.  The Otterbury Incident by Cecil Day-Lewis
44.  Uncle by J.P. Martin
45.  Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
46.  Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff
47.  Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
48.  The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
49.  The Fantastic Four vol. 1 by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
50.  A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnet.

*I haven’t

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2018 update – I have read 11 of these so far.  No lie!