Enjoy Education Recommended Summer Reading Lists

What are you reading this summer?

by Marieke Audsley

The summer holidays are almost upon us, which means it’s time to smother yourself in sun cream, nab a delightful deck chair and get stuck into a really good book. If you have got your beach books packed up but are struggling to decide on what to pack in your children’s rucksacks for in-flight entertainment, poolside reading and bedtime stories then look no further… We have collated a variety of reading lists to inspire you.

Enjoy Education do have lengthier reading lists for all ages so if you’d really like to get stuck in, please email us at info@enjoyeducation.co.uk
But for some shorter selections, take a peek at the below…

First up, are three recommended reading lists by some of Britain’s best loved authors, who when asked a few years ago by the Royal Society of Literature to nominate their top 10 books for schoolchildren, suggested the following:

JK Rowling suggested…

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Tale of Two Bad Mice by Beatrix Potter
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Phillip Pullman suggested…

Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner
The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens (or other good anonymous ballads)
First Book of Samuel, Chapter 17 (the story of David and Goliath)
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A good collection of myths and legends
A good collection of fairytales

For older readers, Andrew Motion suggested…

The Odyssey by Homer
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Lyrical Ballads by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Waste Land by TS Eliot