Introduction, links to the series, and the booklist..
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Above is the Oxford pub where writers C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien used to meet up to discuss writing and life. They dubbed it "The Bird and Baby."
I adore reading, and few books are as dear as the ones I fell in love with during childhood. Upon learning to make characters, setting, and plot come to life in one's own head -- the magic of imagination kicking in -- a kid is never quite the same again. Children's stories give us our first peeks into others' inner lives, teaching us lessons we never had to suffer through and helping us develop empathy.
I'd like to argue that the children's stories we loved shouldn't be left behind when we grow up. It is a lovely thing to be able to share old favorites with the kids who come into our lives, but those books have value for us too. It is a joy to get to take those fun journeys with beloved characters all over again. We remember our beginnings. And a well-written children's book reminds us that we are coming of age in varied ways throughout our lives.
So why British books? Many of the books near the top of my childhood favorites list hail from British authors, which has admittedly turned me into an Anglophile. Also, almost all of my ancestors are from the British Isles; a literary time-line doesn't have to go back very far before I'm essentially reading family history. But those reasons aren't the most compelling. What truly draws me in is the gifts that come with reading original works from a long-lived people, tracing history and culture but also a literary tradition. I would argue that the children's literary tradition in the British Isles is just as rich and valuable as the larger tradition that brought us Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Browning, the Bronte sisters, Eliot, Kipling, Forster, Lawrence, and Auden, to name a few. And for those who love a good fantasy story, there is a lovely path to follow from ancient Beowulf to Harry Potter and beyond. Writers such as Sir Thomas Malory, John Bunyan, George McDonald, Edith Nesbit, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lucy Boston, and C.S. Lewis dipped into British history and folklore to create stories that fire the imagination while exploring the human soul.
As much as I love C.S. Lewis' Narnia books and similar still-popular books, I won't explore those in this series -- at least not yet. What fascinates me is that there are older books that are slowly falling deeper into obscurity, yet they are wonderful reading adventures. These were often the books that the great writers of the last century read when they were growing up and they still have the power to delight, inform, and inspire. And what fun it is to sniff them out and share them here!
Enjoy!
Above is a detail from the Peter Pan sculpture in Kensington Gardens (London). Author James Barrie commissioned it. When it was done, he then had workers install it in the Gardens in the dark so it would seem to the children of London that the artwork appeared magically overnight.
Posts in the Series
(alphabetized by author)
Blyton, Edith -- Noddy Series -- This is a fantasy series about Toyland for younger children.
Boston, The Green Knowe Series -- In these six novels, children living in an English manor house almost a millennium old travel up and down in time to meet each other and have adventures. Genres: Action/Adventure, Low Fantasy.
Boston, The Sea Egg -- Brothers Toby and Joe are on holiday on the Cornish coast when they come across a mysterious rock that looks like an oversized egg. Sure enough, it hatches! Genres: Action/Adventure, Low Fantasy
Boston, Nothing Said -- Libby leaves the city behind to stay with a family friend in the countryside and soon finds herself in a beautiful, compelling world of meadows, woods, gardens, and rivers. Genres: Nature Fiction
Hull and Whitlock, The Far-Distant Oxus – Three English school children have adventures in the Exmoor countryside while their parents are away. They ride horses across windswept moors, camp out under the stars, and build a raft to journey to the sea, but there are many other adventures to be had too. (This is a wonderful gift book if you have a horse-loving kid in your life.) Genre: Action/Adventure.
Jerome, Three Men in a Boat – In this humor story for adults, three young men and a rambunctious dog set off to explore the Thames between London and Oxford -- often with disastrous results. Genres: Action/Adventure, Humor, Travelogue.
Lucas, The Slowcoach – An anonymous stranger sends a family a horse-drawn Gypsy caravan. Off the kids go to explore the historic spots and back roads of their native England… Genres: Action/Adventure, Travelogue.
Ransome, Swallows & Amazons Series -- This series of twelve adventure books take place in the 1930s and offer everything from shipwrecks and pirates to ice sleds and gold mines. Genres: Action/Adventure.
Uttley, A Traveller in Time – A visit to her ancestors’ Derbyshire farm turns into a time travel adventure for Penelope. Soon she learns secrets that may just be her family’s undoing. Genres: Low Fantasy.
Companion Posts:
How the Heather Looks – This is the book that inspired the British Reading Adventure project. Come along for the ride as a family in the 1950s goes looking for traces of children’s stories of yesteryear. (The blog post about this book also explains more about our family project to read classic children's books and then someday explore the settings in person.)
Children’s Literature Cookbooks – Read classic children’s books and then head to the kitchen to whip up the same treats you read about. This is a great way to bring books alive for kids!
Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer – Jane Brocket’s books peep into British children’s literature, giving ideas for fun things to do and cook.
The British Reading Adventure List:
If your library doesn't have these books, try interlibrary loan or online used booksellers.
Fiction for the Very Young
Edith Blyton -- The Noddy series
L. Leslie Brooke -- Ring o’ Roses, Johnny Crow’s Garden, Golden Goose Book,
The Roundabout Turn
Randolph Caldecott
John Cunliffe – The Postman Pat stories
Joseph Jacobs – English Fairy Tales
A. A. Milne – The Winnie the Pooh books
Beatrix Potter – The Fairy Caravan, etc.
Robert Louis Stevenson – A Child’s Garden of Verses
Children’s Fiction (Also see the list of Carnegie Medal winners and the New York Review Children's Collection.)
Eleanor Atkinson – Greyfriars Bobby
Reverend W. Awdry – Thomas the Tank Engine
James Barrie – Peter Pan
Enid Blyton – The Circus of Adventure, The Folk of the Faraway Tree, etc.
Mr Galliano’s Circus, The Secret of Spriggy Holes, The Treasure Hunters
Famous Five series, Malory Tower series, Twins at St Clare’s series
Michael Bond – Paddington Bear stories
L. M. Boston – The Children of Green Knowe series, Nothing Said
Pamela Brown -- A Swish of the Curtain
Frances Hodgson Burnett – Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess,
The Secret Garden
Lewis Carroll – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
Pauline Clarke – The Return of the Twelves
Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, etc.
Mrs. (Juliana) Ewing – The Story of a Short Life, Jackanapes
Ruby Ferguson – Children at the Shop, Jill books, Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary
Eve Garnett – The Family from One End Street
Kenneth Grahame – Wind in the Willows, Reluctant Dragon, etc.
Elizabeth Janet Gray – Adam of the Road
Katherine Hull and Pamela Whitlock – The Far-Distant Oxus,
Escape to Persia, The Oxus in Summer, and Crowns
Rudyard Kipling – Stalky & Co, Puck of Pook’s Hill, Rewards and Fairies, etc.
C. S. Lewis – Narnia series, etc.
Hilda Lewis – The Ship that Flew
E. V. Lucas – The Slowcoach
Hugh Lofting – Dr. Doolittle series
Captain Marryat – Children of the New Forest
George Macdonald – The Princess and the Goblin
Gavin Maxwell – Ring of Bright Water, The Otter’s Tale
E. Nesbit – The Railway Children, etc.
Mary Norton – The Magic Bedknob, the Borrowers series
Philippa Pearce – Tom’s Midnight Garden
M. Pardoe – The Far Island, Bunkle series, Argle’s Mist (Celtic Britain),
Argle’s Causeway (Norman England)
Howard Pyle – Robin Hood, Otto of the Silver Hand
Arthur Ransome – Swallows & Amazons, Swallowdale, The Child’s Book of the Seasons, etc.
J. K. Rowling – The Harry Potter stories
Margery Sharp – The Rescuers, etc.
Robert Louis Stevenson – Treasure Island, Kidnapped, etc.
Noel Streatfeild -- Circus Shoes, Tennis Shoes, Ballet Shoes, Traveling Shoes, etc.
Rosemary Sutcliffe – The Shield Ring, etc.
P. L. Travers – Mary Poppins series, Gingerbread Shop, etc.
Alison Uttley – A Traveler in Time, Little Grey Rabbit
Henry Williamson – Tarka the Otter
Young Adult and Adult Fiction
Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Idylls of the King
Richard Adams – Watership Down
Jane Austen – Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice,
Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion
Richard Doddridge Blackmore – Lorna Doone
Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre, Villette
Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights
John Bunyan – Pilgrim’s Progress
Geoffrey Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales
Daniel Dafoe – Moll Flanders
Charles Dickens – The Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist,
A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, etc.
Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, etc.
Robert Browning – “Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came”
George Eliot – Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch
Eric Ennion – House on the Shore
E. M. Forster – A Passage to India, Where Angels Fear to Tread,
A Room with a View, Howard’s End, Maurice, The Longest Journey
Elizabeth Gaskell – Cranford, North and South, Mary Barton, etc.
Thomas Hardy – Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Far from the Maddening Crowd
Christina Hole – English Folk Heroes
Robert Hunt – Popular Romances of the West of England
Jerome K. Jerome – Three Men in a Boat
Eleanore Jewett – The Hidden Treasure of Glaston
Charles Kingsley – Westward Ho!, The Water Babies, Hypatia,
Hereward the Wake
D. H. Lawrence – Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, etc.
Laurie Lee – Cider with Rosie, The Edge of Day
John Milton – Paradise Lost
Hope Muntz – The Golden Warrior
Barbara Picard – Tales of the British People
Rosamund Pilcher – The Shell Seekers
Sir Walter Scott – Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, etc.
Caroline Dale Snedeker – The White Isle
Rosemary Sutcliffe – Warrior Scarlet, The Lantern Bearers, etc.
J. R. R. Tolkien – The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings
Sir Thomas Malory – Le Morte d’Arthur
Robert Smith Surtees – Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities
Unknown -- Beowulf
T. H. White – The Once and Future King, Mistress Masham’s Repose, etc.
P. G. Wodehouse – Jeeves and Wooster stories, etc.
Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse,
Orlando
History
Leonard Cottrell – Seeing Roman Britain
Jacquetta Hawkes – Early Britain
Geoffrey of Monmouth – Historia
Travelogues and Guides
1851 -- Lavengro by George Henry Borrow
(also The Romany Rye and Wild Wales)
1880s (fiction) – Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
1904 – A Wanderer in London – E. V. Lucas
1908 (fiction) -- The Slowcoach by E. V. Lucas
1933 – English Journey by J.B. Priestley
1958 – How the Heather Looks by Joan Bodger
1968 – Journey Through Britain by John Hillaby
1982 – Kingdom by the Sea by Paul Theroux
1984 – A Matter of Wales by Jan Morris
1994 – Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
2002 – Once Upon a Time in Great Britain: A Travel Guide to the Sights and Settings of your Favorite Children’s Stories by Melanie Wentz
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I'd like to thank my mother for always taking us to the library. Even if we were living somewhere just for the summer, she'd take us to get a temporary local card. And thanks, too, to her friend Ms. Elaine who knew an awful lot about children's books and shared lists with our family.
What a lovely posting. Thank you so much for sharing this treasure.
Posted by: tiffany | 20 February 2013 at 11:51 AM
Thanks, Tiffany! Our whole family is having a great time with the reading project.
Posted by: Valerie J. Frey | 23 February 2013 at 02:07 PM
I'm joining this conversation rather late, but if you're still reading: the Far-Distant Oxus was my favorite childhood book and I wanted so badly to read it aloud to my children. Alas, I couldn't remember the title - only that it had Ox or Oxen in it - so I had to search for ten years before I finally entered a magical combination of clues into google, using images this last time, and boom! There it was right in the middle of the page (and Oxus, not Oxen! No wonder I couldn't find it). I just finished reading it today to my son and it was everything I remembered; just wonderful, inspiring and a glimpse into the mind of children. Thank you for promoting this lovely book, and the others, too, which I will continue to try to find for under $100! And please, if you haven't already, read Ann Bronte's lovely novel Agnes Grey. You will enjoy it (didn't see it on your list). Not nearly as dramatic as her sisters' books but a very good read just the same.
Posted by: marY | 07 July 2014 at 05:21 PM
Hello, MarY. Thank you for your comments. I'm so glad you found the book at last! (I had a similar search for the picture book _The Maggie B_ by Irene Haas. I went through the whole picture book shelves at the library until I found it!) I will definitely search for Agnes Grey.
Posted by: Valerie J. Frey | 12 July 2014 at 09:58 PM