what every child should read

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/jan/31/buildingachildrenslibrary.guardianchildrensfictionprize2005?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

^^ this is a nonentity of an article i found by accident and i don't recommend anyone reading but it has the following three lists of what Famous Literary Figures thought were ten things ppl ought to read before leaving school and they all made me go ~hmmmm~ albeit in different ways

JK Rowling
Author of the Harry Potter series

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

Philip Pullman
Author of the His Dark Materials trilogy

Finn Family Moomintroll - Tove Jansson
Emil and the Detectives - Erich Kästner
The Magic Pudding - Norman Lindsay
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Where the Wild Things Are - 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 - William Shakespeare
A good collection of myths and legends
A good collection of fairytales

Andrew Motion
Poet laureate

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

should have made this a poll of 'which of these ppl do you dislike most based simply on the following lists'

i forgot to do anything about formatting motion's but i'm sure yr all aware that 'lyrical ballads samuel taylor coleridge and' isn't a book.

Andrew Motion's just trolling right?

Hm. I think it's kind of difficult, really, because there's such a difference between primary school and secondary school. And what are they expected to do with the list, name things that they think should be on the curriculum, or name books that they would personally recommend to kids?

Taking those problems into account, the first two lists strike me as pretty much fine, really. A mix of target ages, mostly classics, meh, I can't think of any reason why it would make me hate them. Motion's list, on the other hand, is pretentious bullshit. Yes, Ulysses is amazing, and yes, some kids are more than able to handle it. But why the hell would you put it on a list of things that you think all kids should read before they leave school? I didn't read it until I was in my late teens, and although I was surprised by how naturally I took to it after all the 'difficult' hype, I still think that it's a ridiculous thing to do.

Andrew Motion is as big a cock in real life as he is on lists like this. JK Rowling is a liar: she openly cribbed half her shit from Nesbit, Williams, Lindsay, Lewis, Wynne-Jones, Travers, Johnson, Keary, Kinglsey, Cooper, Jacques, Lively, Elias, et al., and yet lists a bunch of canonical Establishment White People. Pullman is a little more honest, but he's blinkered by euro canonicity and historical respectibility, and blows the opportunity to make an Actual List That A Child Might Like.

I like Pullman's list. Accessible but sort of unconventional.

I was in the attic today and found an old poetry anthology that my father owned as a child, complete with scribbled marginalia, doodles, and a whole page of spirited signature practicing. I also, coincidentally, found his copy of Kipling's Just So Stories. Keats and Kipling seem like great writers to give to a very young person.

Pullman is a little more honest, but he's blinkered by euro canonicity and historical respectibility, and blows the opportunity to make an Actual List That A Child Might Like

says "should read", not "might like". not that you're wrong. the rowling list is just baffling ... that's a list of "what every child is, already, made to read," ffs

i have a little sympathy for andrew motion here tbh, at least he's thinking outside the box eh

lolllllllll @ motion