Gretchen Rubin's 81 Favourite Childrens' and YA Books

Gretchen Rubin is a lawyer and author of several books, her first being The Happiness Project. She reads very widely and loves reading children's books, so much so that she has started three reading groups for reading kid lit and created a shrine to her books in her home. So it makes sense that she would put together a great list of her favourites. I love that there are 81 suggestions.

1. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - Joan Aiken (see my review)

2. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

3. Fairy Tales - Hans Christian Andersen

4. Ghosts and More Ghosts - Robert Arthur

5. Tuck Everlasting - Natalie Babbit (see my review)

6. Peter Pan - M. Barrie

7. The Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum

8. Are you there God? It's me, Margaret - Judy Blume (see my review)

9. What I Saw and How I Lied - Judy Blunder

10. Andy Buckram's Tin Men - Carol Ryrie Brink

11. The Shades - Betty Brock

12. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodson Burnett (see my review)

13. The Midnight Fox - Betsy Byars

14. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You - Peter Cameron

15. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

16. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

17. Graceling - Kristin Cashore

18. What the Witch Left - Ruth Chew

19. Jane-Emily - Patricia Clapp

20. Sister of the Bride - Beverly Cleary

21. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins (see my review)

22. The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper

23. James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl (see my review)

24. D'aulaire's Book of Greek Myths - Ingrid and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire

25. Half Magic - Edward Eager

26. Mandy - Julie Andrews Edwards

27. This Star Shall Abide - Sylvia Louise Engdahl

28. The Saturdays - Elizabeth Enright

29. The Witch Family - Eleanor Estes

30. Understood Betsy - Dorothy Canfield Fisher

31. The Greengage Summer - Rumer Godden

32. The Fault in Our Stars - John Green (see my review)

33. Up a Road Slowly - Irene Hunt

34. The Animal Family - Randall Jarrell

35. Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones

36. The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster

37. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - E.L. Konigsburg (see my review)

38. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

39. A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula Le Guin

40. A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle (see my review)

41. Strawberry Girl - Lois Lenski

42. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis

43. The Golden Name Day - Jennie Lindquist

44. The Giver - Lois Lowry (see my review)

45. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Betty McDonald

46. Beauty - Robin McKinely

47. Twilight - Stephanie Meyer

48. Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery

49. The Girl Who Owned a City - O.T. Nelson

50. The Railway Children - E. Nesbit

51. The Whirling Shapes - Joan North

52. His Majesty's Dragon - Naomi Novik

53. The Silver Crown - Robert O'Brien

54. Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell (see my review)

55. Time at the Top - Edward Ormondroyd

56. Wonder - R.J. Palacio (see my review)

57. The Twenty-One Balloons - William Pene du Bois

58. The Sherwood Ring - Elizabeth Marie Pope

59. The Golden Compass and His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

60. The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin 

61. Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls

62. The House Without a Christmas Tree - Gail Rock

63. Freaky Friday - Mary Rodgers

64. Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell

65. Harry Potter and the Sorcer's/Philosopher's Stone - J.K. Rowling

66. The Good Master - Kate Seedy

67. House of Stairs - William Sleator

68. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith

69. Black and Blue Magic - Zilpha Keatley Snyder

70. Miracles on Maple Hill - Virginia Sorenson

71. Heidi - Johanna Spyri (see my review)

72. In a Mirror - Mary Stolz

73. Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfield (see my review)

74. All-of-a-Kind Family - Sydney Taylor

75. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien (see my review)

76. Mary Poppins - P.L. Travers 

77.  The Boxcar Children - Gertrude Chandler Warner

78. Daddy-Long-Legs - Jean Webster

79. Charlotte's Web - E.B. White 

80. The Sword in the Stone - T.H. White

81. The Little House in the Big Woods - Laura Ingalls Wilder

28/81

A respectable effort I guess. Although so many more to go. I'm always astonished to come across so many books I've never even heard of before, and this list has quite a few. 

March 2017 29/81

June 2017 30/81

June 2018 31/81