Learning to read involves more than just following a school’s reading scheme. At Acorn we would encourage all children to read for pleasure. For older readers we now have a list of a wide selection of books that your child may enjoy reading for pleasure.
- Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan – 1678
- Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe – 1719
- Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift – 1726
- The Nutcracker and the Mouse King – E. T. A. Hoffman – 1816
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo – 1831
- A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens – 1843
- The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas, père – 1844
- Fairy Tales – Hans Christian Andersen – 1846 (English)
- David Copperfield – Charles Dickens – 1850
- A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens – 1853
- The Coral Island – R. M. Ballantyne – 1857
- Tom Brown’s Schooldays – Thomas Hughes – 1857
- The Water Babies – Charles Kingsley – 1863
- A Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne – 1864
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll – 1865
- Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates – Mary Mapes Dodge – 1865
- Little Women – Louisa May Alcott – 1868
- Lorna Doone – R. D. Blackmore – 1869
- Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea – Jules Verne – 1870
- At the Back of the North Wind – George MacDonald – 1871
- The Princess and the Goblin – George MacDonald – 1871
- Through the Looking-Glass – Lewis Carroll – 1871
- A Dog of Flanders – Ouida – 1872
- What Katy Did – Susan Coolidge – 1873
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain – 1876
- Black Beauty – Anna Sewell – 1877
- The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood – Howard Pyle – 1883
- Nights with Uncle Remus – Joel Chandler Harris – 1883
- Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson – 1883
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain – 1884
- Heidi – Johanna Spyri – 1884 (English)
- King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard – 1885
- Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson – 1886
- Little Lord Fauntleroy – Frances Hodgson Burnett – 1886
- The Happy Prince and Other Tales – Oscar Wilde – 1888
- The Blue Fairy Book – Andrew Lang – 1889
- The Adventures of Pinocchio – Carlo Collodi – 1891 (English)
- Seven Little Australians – Ethel Turner – 1894
- Moonfleet – J. Meade Falkner – 1898
- The Story of the Treasure Seekers – E. Nesbit – 1899
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum – 1900
- Five Children and It – E. Nesbit – 1902
- Just So Stories – Rudyard Kipling – 1902
- King Arthur and His Knights – Howard Pyle – 1902-3
- The Call of the Wild – Jack London – 1903
- Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm – Kate Douglas Wiggin – 1903
- Peter Pan – J. M. Barrie – 1904
- A Little Princess – Frances Hodgson Burnett – 1905
- The Railway Children – E. Nesbit – 1906
- White Fang – Jack London – 1906
- Anne of Green Gables – Lucy Maud Montgomery – 1908
- The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame – 1908
- The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett – 1909/1911
- The Lost World – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – 1912
- Pollyanna – Eleanor H. Porter – 1913
- The Magic Pudding – Norman Lindsay – 1918
- The Story of Doctor Dolittle – Hugh Lofting – 1920
- The House at Pooh Corner – A. A. Milne – 1927
- Emil and the Detectives – Erich Kästner – 1929
- Little House on the Prairie – Laura Ingalls Wilder – 1935
- The Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien – 1937
- Curious George – Margret Rey and H. A. Rey – 1941
- The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – 1943
- Pippi Longstocking – Astrid Lindgren – 1945
- Goodnight Moon – Margaret Wise Brown – 1947
- The Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum
- The Wind and the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
- The Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
- Harry Potter series – J.K.Rowling
- Under the Hawthorn Tree – Marita Conlon McKenna
- Tom’s Midnight Garden – Philippa Pearce
- The Ghost of Thomas Kempe – Penelope Lively
- Fact Books
- Encyclopaedias
- Newspapers (age appropriate)
- National Geographic
- Travel Brochures – eg Disney
- Children’s movie guides and cinema listings
- Fact books
- Telephone directories