Sunday, June 04, 2006

Summer reading list for David

David asked me to make him a reading list for this summer. I suggested that I give him a list of 15 or 20 books and he choose about 10 of them to read.

I remember the first time I got a summer reading list. It was the summer I was 10 and my parents had taken me to stay with my cousins for a week. Aunt Nancy took us to the Birmingham Public Library. At the circulation desk were stacks of bookmarks printed with reading lists according to grade level. I took one for the 4th grade, one for the 5th grade, and one for the 6th grade. I wish I had them now or could remember the titles printed on them. I do remember that I enjoyed hunting down those books and reading them. On one list was These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder. In a wonderful moment of serendipity, I mistakenly picked up The Golden Name Day by Jennie Lindquist instead of the other book, and found a story that I hugely enjoyed - more than the Laura Ingalls Wilder book, which I finally read a year or so later.

David is 11 and he has already started his list for the summer:
The White Stag by Kate Seredy
The Chestry Oak by Kate Seredy
The Poppy Seed Cakes by Margery Clark
The Deer on the Bicycle by Patrick F. McManus

Jacy, Tom and I decided on 20 more for David to choose from. (Actually, it was more Jacy and less Tom. As Jacy rightly pointed out, Tom's input was suspect as he really only had a tiny stint of reading buckets and buckets of books, and that was back when he was 12 or 13.)

The List:
The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Call It Courage by Armstrong Sperry
Stuart Little by E.B. White
Freckles by Gene Stratton-Porter
The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham
The Cottage at Bantry Bay by Hilda Van Stockum
Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright
Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Penrod by Booth Tarkington
The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss
Cheaper by the Dozen by Ernestine Gilbreth Carey and Frank Gilbreth
The Moffats by Eleanor Estes
Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
The Story of Dr. Doolittle by Hugh Lofting
Little Britches by Ralph Moody
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

I'm open to any suggestions of summertime must-reads for an 11 year-old boy. My list consists of books we already have, but I'm not averse to buying or borrowing from the library. Any ideas?

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1 Comments:

Blogger Tom said...

Now now now, I did more reading in later years, just different books from you.

10:36 PM  

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