{"id":653,"date":"2009-07-21T17:21:11","date_gmt":"2009-07-21T17:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=653"},"modified":"2020-05-07T13:33:42","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T17:33:42","slug":"the-best-kids-books-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2009\/07\/21\/the-best-kids-books-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Kids\u2019 Books Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Best Kids\u2019 Books Ever<\/div>\n
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF<\/div>\n
Published: July 5, 2009, New York Times<\/div>\n
Pry your kids away from the keyboard and the television, and give them a book. For ideas, here\u2019s a summer reading list. Also see the Post: SUMMER READING IS ESSENTIAL! <\/a><\/div>\n
\n

So how will your kids spend this summer? Building sand castles at the beach? Swimming at summer camp? Shedding I.Q. points?<\/p>\n

In educating myself this spring about education, I was aghast to learn that American children drop in I.Q. each summer vacation \u2014 because they aren\u2019t in school or exercising their brains.<\/p>\n

This is less true of middle-class students whose parents drag them off to summer classes or make them read books. But poor kids fall two months behind in reading level each summer break, and that accounts for much of the difference in learning trajectory between rich and poor students.<\/p>\n

A mountain of research points to a central lesson: Pry your kids away from the keyboard and the television this summer, and get them reading. Let me help by offering my list of the Best Children\u2019s Books \u2014 Ever!<\/p>\n

So here they are, in ascending order of difficulty, and I can vouch that these are also great to read aloud.<\/p>\n

1. \u201cCharlotte\u2019s Web.\u201d The story of the spider who saves her friend, the pig, is the kindest representation of an arthropod in literary history.<\/p>\n

2. The Hardy Boys series. Yes, I hear the snickers. But I devoured them myself and have known so many kids for whom these were the books that got them excited about reading. The first in the series is weak, but \u201cHouse on the Cliff\u201d is a good opener. (As for Nancy Drew, I yawned over her, but she seems to turn girls into Supreme Court justices.<\/a> Among her fans as kids were Sandra Day O\u2019Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.)<\/p>\n

3. \u201cWind in the Willows.\u201d My mother read this 101-year-old English classic to me, and I\u2019m still in love with the characters. Most memorable of all is Toad \u2014 rich, vain, childish and prone to wrecking cars.<\/p>\n

4. The Freddy the Pig series. Published between 1927 and 1958, these 26 books are funny, beautifully written gems. They concern a talking pig, Freddy, who is lazy, messy and sometimes fearful, yet a loyal friend, a first-rate detective and an impressive poet. These were my very favorite books when I was in elementary school. A good one to start with is \u201cFreddy the Detective\u201d or \u201cFreddy Plays Football.\u201d (Avoid the first and weakest, \u201cFreddy Goes to Florida.\u201d)<\/p>\n

5. The Alex Rider series. These are modern British spy thrillers in which things keep exploding in a very satisfying way. Alex amounts to a teenage James Bond for the 21st century.<\/p>\n

6. The Harry Potter series. Look, the chance to read these books aloud is by itself a great reason to have kids.<\/p>\n

7. \u201cGentle Ben.\u201d The coming-of-age story of a sickly, introspective Alaskan boy who makes friends with an Alaskan brown bear, to the horror of his tough, domineering father.<\/p>\n

8. \u201cAnne of Green Gables.\u201d At a time when young ladies were supposed to be demure and decorative, Anne emerged to become one of the strongest and most memorable girls in literature.<\/p>\n

9. \u201cThe Dog Who Wouldn\u2019t Be.\u201d This is a hilarious, poignant and exceptionally well-written memoir of childhood on the Canadian prairies. (Note, if you prefer sweet to funny, try \u201cRascal\u201d instead.)<\/p>\n

10. \u201cLittle Lord Fauntleroy.\u201d This classic spawned the Fauntleroy suit and named a duck (Donald Duck\u2019s middle name is Fauntleroy). An American boy from a struggling family turns out to be heir to an irritable and fabulously wealthy old English lord, whom the boy proceeds to tame and civilize.<\/p>\n

11. \u201cOn to Oregon.\u201d This outdoor saga, written almost 90 years ago, is loosely based on the true story of the Sager family journeying by covered wagon in 1848, in the early days of the Oregon Trail. The parents die on route, and the seven children \u2014 the youngest just an infant \u2014 continue on their own. They are led by 13-year-old John: spoiled, surly, often mean, yet determined and even heroic in keeping his siblings alive.<\/p>\n

12. \u201cThe Prince and the Pauper.\u201d Most kids encounter Mark Twain through \u201cTom Sawyer,\u201d but this work is at least as funny and offers unforgettable images of English history.<\/p>\n

13. \u201cLad, a Dog\u201d is simply the best book ever about a pet, a collie. This is to \u201cLassie\u201d what Shakespeare is to CliffsNotes. The book was published 90 years ago, and readers are still visiting Lad\u2019s real grave in New Jersey \u2014 plus, this is a book so full of SAT words it could put Stanley Kaplan out of business.<\/p>\n

You can post your own suggestions for best children\u2019s books on my blog, www.nytimes.com\/ontheground.<\/a> My own kids have the temerity to think they know better than I which books they\u2019ve enjoyed, so I\u2019ve deigned to post their recommendations there. But listening to one\u2019s children is dangerous: I advocate reading to them instead.<\/p>\n

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground<\/a>. Please also join me on Facebook<\/a>, watch my YouTube videos<\/a> and follow me on Twitter<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Best Kids’ Books Ever By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: July 5, 2009, New York Times Pry your kids away from the keyboard and the television, and give them a book. For ideas, here’s a summer reading list. Also see the Post: SUMMER READING IS ESSENTIAL! So how will your kids spend this summer? Building […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-childrens-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}