Best Children's Literature Books

Orphaned Rose Campbell comes to live with her seven aunts and eight boy cousins, and her unconventional guardian Uncle Alec sets about raising her according to his progressive ideas about health, fresh air, and genuine education.

A Chronicles of Narnia tale set during the reign of the Pevensies. Shasta, a boy raised in the harsh southern land of Calormen, flees north toward Narnia with a talking horse named Bree, uncovering a plot of war and the secret of his own identity along the way.

The fourth Anne of Green Gables novel. Engaged to Gilbert but separated by his medical studies, Anne spends three years as principal of Summerside High School, boarding at Windy Poplars and winning over a town wary of newcomers — told largely through her letters home.

Jo March, now married to Professor Bhaer, runs Plumfield School for boys, where she and her husband put their progressive educational ideals into practice with a diverse cast of boys each needing something different from school.

Sara Crewe arrives at Miss Minchin's London boarding school as a wealthy, imaginative girl; when her father dies penniless, she is reduced to a servant's life but maintains her dignity through storytelling and the power of her own inner world.

Alice steps through a mirror into a reversed world organized as a chess game. Carroll's sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland introduces Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Humpty Dumpty, and the White Queen — and refines his philosophical games with language, identity, and time.

A kind-hearted American boy named Cedric Errol discovers he is the heir to an English earldom, and his natural goodness gradually transforms his crusty grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt.

Johann David Wyss's classic tale of survival and ingenuity. Shipwrecked on a tropical island, a resourceful Swiss family builds a new life from the wilderness, taming the land and its creatures in an episodic adventure that has delighted young readers for two centuries.

R. M. Ballantyne's classic Victorian adventure. Shipwrecked on a South Pacific island, three British boys — Ralph, Jack, and Peterkin — build an idyllic life in paradise, facing sharks, pirates, and cannibals. The hugely influential book that inspired Golding's Lord of the Flies.