Great Books for Girls
Great Books for Everybody Else
Great Books for Girls
I racked my brains for suggestions and finally decided that a centralized list was needed—a canon of girls' great books, if you will. I consulted my mother, my sisters, my friends and even some of my former teachers. Finally, I distributed the list to my students' moms, confident that they would find in it ample material to educate their daughters' minds and inspire their daughters' hearts on the path to virtue. But even after the summer ended, friends kept asking me for book suggestions and I realized that the need for a list of Girls' Great Books went far beyond my immediate circle. Teachers, parents, grandparents and friends all over the world would like some guidance on what books they should recommend to the girls in their lives. So I decided to publish my list in the hope that other people might find it useful.
There are plenty of books on this list that boys would like too, but it's specifically for girls because many of the books feature female protagonists and I'm more familiar with what girls like in a book than what boys like. I can guarantee that every book on this list is loved by at least one girl—me. :)
The Velveteen Rabbit
The Giving Tree
Roxaboxen
Are You My Mother? (My mom’s favorite)
Guess How Much I Love You?
Curious George
Make Way for Ducklings
Where the Wild Things Are
Madeline series (My dad has this memorized from reading it to us so many times)
Strega Nona
Babar
Blueberries for Sal
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne
Dinotopia (really more of a novel, but the illustrations are so beautiful I’m including it here)
A Family of Poems, edited by Caroline Kennedy (A family favorite)
The Princess and the Kiss by Jennie Bishop (beautiful, tasteful introduction to purity)
Novels
Little Women, Little Men and Jo’s Boys by Louisa May Alcott
Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott (really, anything by Alcott is good!)
The Black Cauldron series by Lloyd Alexander
Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery
Emily of New Moon series by L.M. Montgomery (I recommend all of her works)
Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Five for Victory and Friendly Gables series by Hilda von Stockum
Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe series by C.S. Lewis
The American Girl historical books (not the ones about modern girls)
A Lantern in her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich (My favorite book in high school)
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (Anything she writes is wonderful)
Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
The Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner
A Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L’Engle (EXCEPT for Many Waters, which is sketchy)
Meet the Austins by Madeleine L’Engle
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
Aesop’s Fables
The Red Fairy Book, Green Fairy Book and the other colors of fairy books (old and very hard to find, but worth it)
A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter
A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter
What Katy Did series by Susan Coolidge
Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg
Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter
The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert O’Brien
The Family under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
Blue Willow by Doris Gates
Nancy Drew series by Carol Ryrie Brink
Doctor Doolittle series
The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (really cute book!)
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates
All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor
Come Rack! Come Rope! by Robert Benson*
Outlaws of Ravenhurst by Sister M. Imelda Wallace*
Come Rack! Come Rope! by Robert Benson*
Outlaws of Ravenhurst by Sister M. Imelda Wallace*
Here is a second list of books for children. It is intended for both boys and girls, and it's awesome. Highly recommended.
My favorite books of all time! Have you read any of these?
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| The library from Beauty and the Beast. A girl can dream... |
Novels
A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Once and Future King by T. H. White
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Peter Pan by James M. Barrie
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness de Orczy
Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur and Beau Ideal by Percival Wren
Men At Arms, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender by Evelyn Waugh (also known as the Sword of Honour trilogy)
Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy
The Second Coming by Walker Percy
Plays
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (my all-time favorite)
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
The Tempest and As You Like It and Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare
Poetry
Poems and Prose by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Dante's Divine Comedy
100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
Nonfiction
Man and Woman: A Divine Invention and The Privilege of Being a Woman by Alice von Hildebrand
Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
The Idea of a University by John Henry Cardinal Newman
On Writing Well by William Zinsser
Building Character in Schools by K. Ryan and K. Bohlin
Occasions by Kate Spade
Letters to Gabriel by Karen Santorum
Letters to My Husband by Saint Gianna Molla
A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken
Spiritual Reading
Story of A Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux (the very best one!)
Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge
Wild at Heart by John Eldredge
Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton
Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila
Rome Sweet Home by Scott Hahn (so good!)
Three to Get Married by Fulton Sheen
Three Philosophies of Life by Peter Kreeft
Biographies
America's Queen: A Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Sarah Bradford
J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter
John Adams by David McCullough
Grant and Lee by Edward Bonekemper
Philosophy
Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics
Plato's Republic and Symposium
I and Thou by Martin Buber
The Analects of Confucius (so good!)