7 Comments

Great booklists. Im still making my way through it but I love that you included Roald Dahl. My daughter has listened to all his stories including his autobiographies. What an excellent storyteller. Two of my children were late readers but audio books opened the doors to great literature for them so they never missed out and I had the benefit of listening along.

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Dahl is a great student of human nature. I consider his books invaluable teaching tools.

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We have read, listened to, and loved many of these as a family. I’d love to see more diversity on your lists! Louise Erdrich, Kelly Yang, and Reyna Grande are some of our favorites for broadening perspectives.

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I know that's a weakness of these lists, but I'm trying to stick with the tried and true and as I haven't read the books you mention, I don't feel I can ethically place them on a list of things I'm recommending, but BY ALL MEANS keep sending out recommendations everywhere you can. Reading is the most democratic of all human endeavors. <3

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I totally understand. You have to start somewhere! My main complaint with reading “the classics” tends to be that they are too white and too Western! I loved seeing Chinua Achebe and others on your list though. Also, I’m adding Percival Everett and Margarita Engle to the authors I mentioned earlier! So many fabulous voices.

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I love your book lists--thank you! I will get a lot of these. I also highly recommend the Tripod books by John Christopher. My kids are enthralled by the tale of a post-alien invasion world in which 14-year-olds get "capped" with a metal device that makes them docile and incapable of resistance to the alien overlords. Eerily prescient--Neuralink, anyone?--these books all make the case for freedom at any cost.

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There was another teen series I really liked starting with a book called Uglies. The SciFi guys are all anti-authoritarian as far as I can see. I'll look into the TriPod series... I'm always glad to hear a family finding new books they love.

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