I've read both of these, and I couldn't agree more with the takeaways. Right now I'm thinking that as my daughter moves into middle school next year, that I will read Mere Christianity with her as "summer reading." Thanks, Dixie!
This is so encouraging; thank you! Screwtape Letters is on my 14 year old son’s homeschool reading list for the spring. As you perfectly describe, it has been so challenging to find good fiction for this age. Animal Farm is a favourite of his, and all things Tolkien!
I love both of these classics! They are so wonderfully written and worth coming back to over and over again.
I think I was in about 8th grade when I read The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and remember really enjoying it and learning a bit about history too. I wonder what I would think of it as an adult....
High school is a great time to get classics in, for sure! I read quite a lot of classic lit, including Dickens, Hemmingway, Austen, Virgil and Cervantes. I read most of the Space Trilogy, Till We Have Faces (which I loved), and of course quite of a lot of Tolkien's work (not just Lord of the Rings). George MacDonald's catalogue is also fascinating, thoughtful, and imaginative. I prefer his fantasy offerings, particularly the Princess and the Goblin, but he has quite a lot of fiction as well. He is an author Lewis liked. Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea is also worth reading: deep language, deep story (do not judge it by the tv adaptation). For YA by a living author, Naomi Novik has a wonderful alternative history series set during the Napoleonic wars (celebrating heroic virtues) and her work Spinning Silver is a Rumpelstiltskin retelling set in a land like Russia, featuring a Jewish protagonist and Russian ice elves. It's a thoughtful, beautifully written story.
I have a 9yo son who I have never managed to get into the Narnia books despite repeated attempts!
HOWEVER.
We had excellent success with “The Great Divorce” and “Mere Christianity” is definitely on the docket. We started the audiobook together in the car and he liked it but then we got distracted by other things.
No religious value but we are also having a VERY good time with Arthur Conan Doyle. He read A Study in Scarlet with his dad, and how we’re most of the way through the first short story collection. After that I think we will skip ahead to Hound of the Baskervilles, which is my personal favorite.
The Iliad has sex and violence but it’s the Iliad and he loves it. We’re about halfway through. When we eventually finish it we will move on to the Odyssey, then the Aeneid.
Shakespeare’s historical plays are also on the near-term docket. I’m thinking of the Henrys especially. We won’t read them though — going to watch them first!
Since he is skeptical of all fantasy after disliking Narnia so much I am not sure if I will be able to get him into Tolkien but we are going to try!
One of our all-time favorite series is not fiction, but Ralph Moody’s autobiography, the “Little Britches” series. It has so many wonderful examples of good character, ingenuity, integrity and is plain fun to boot. We’ve had so many conversations from it as a read aloud but would be equally good as a book for (especially boys) a young teen.
Oh, I just remembered a great series of books that I adored when I was this age--The Great Brain books by John D. Fitzgerald. The humor made them feel more like an adult read to me at the time. Sort of bridging that gap between children’s literature and YA. And they’re Catholic (or half anyway 😏).
Definitely want to put in a bid for Discworld, especially with Tiffany Aching as an entry point for younger teens, who, if they like that, will race into the rest of them and be infinitely richer for the experience. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, too. The adult fiction that will draw them on. Consider also--mysteries. Series with a lot of entries to continue their middle-grade experience. After all, adults love that sense of abundance and discovery, too. For more “classic” classics, never discount the sheer power of giving a 13yo girl a copy of Jane Eyre and a copy of Pride & Prejudice and seeing which she prefers. And Dracula. Dracula is always a good time.
Also, very much based on my experience, If your teen isn’t interested in or isn’t comfortable with sex, they’ll probably just skim. If they are, then they have a lifetime of happiness in the romance section ahead of them and that’s a fine thing, too.
There's some YA fiction that's actually good. The Giver series by Lois Lowry comes to mind, and the Redwall and Castaways of the Flying Dutchman series by Brian Jacques (which is sometimes put in YA, sometimes in Adult). I'd classify Hatchet by Gary Paulson as YA too, and there's a couple passages from that that have stuck with me for years. And, strangely, anything written AFTER the year 2000 by Caroline B. Cooney (prior to that, she wrote a bunch of garbage, but then she...matured, I guess?).
Now, the Twilight and Divergent series? Pretty much oversexed twaddle. The Hunger Games? Vastly overrated (written at an obviously immature reading level…the movies are actually better). The overblown politically charged stuff that's blowing up local library shelves? I tend to think that stuff’s straight up propaganda.
I don't think YA as a subset of literature is worth tossing out wholesale, but I concede that a lot of it is, indeed, trash or else vastly inferior. I'll probably be introducing my kids to my favorites from that genre, but not allowing them to check out much else.
Thanks for asking! My favorites I read as an adult (to study genre as a writer) in classic British and other YA novels:
--I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith. I admit this one got me hooked on reading YA as it has imaginative girl trying to bust loose from the abandoned English castle her family lives in. Who doesn’t want that? Written in 1948. But do NOT watch any of the movie versions.
--Five on a Treasure Island - Enid Blyton, part of Famous Five series, illustrations by Eileen Soper. Published in 1942. I went looking for this after fondly remembering it with my childhood library. A series with same children (ages 5 to 11) going on simple adventures that get complicated. I was hooked. Can be read by 8 year olds.
--The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon. A 2003 Brit novel also made into a play. Certainly good for a thinking mystery dog lover.
--Rodzina - Karen Cushman. Not Brit, a very American story of the “orphan train” but told by a feisty and overweight Polish girl, who does eventually find a true home. Afterwards one can read or watch about the real orphan train.
what are your thoughts on Till We Have Faces?
I thought “Girl of the Limberlost” was wonderful for that middle stage between girlhood and womanhood.
Loved this! Thank you for sharing!
Have you read Regina Doman’s Fairytales Retold series? I believe they are intended for this demographic!
I've read both of these, and I couldn't agree more with the takeaways. Right now I'm thinking that as my daughter moves into middle school next year, that I will read Mere Christianity with her as "summer reading." Thanks, Dixie!
This is so encouraging; thank you! Screwtape Letters is on my 14 year old son’s homeschool reading list for the spring. As you perfectly describe, it has been so challenging to find good fiction for this age. Animal Farm is a favourite of his, and all things Tolkien!
I love both of these classics! They are so wonderfully written and worth coming back to over and over again.
I think I was in about 8th grade when I read The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and remember really enjoying it and learning a bit about history too. I wonder what I would think of it as an adult....
High school is a great time to get classics in, for sure! I read quite a lot of classic lit, including Dickens, Hemmingway, Austen, Virgil and Cervantes. I read most of the Space Trilogy, Till We Have Faces (which I loved), and of course quite of a lot of Tolkien's work (not just Lord of the Rings). George MacDonald's catalogue is also fascinating, thoughtful, and imaginative. I prefer his fantasy offerings, particularly the Princess and the Goblin, but he has quite a lot of fiction as well. He is an author Lewis liked. Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea is also worth reading: deep language, deep story (do not judge it by the tv adaptation). For YA by a living author, Naomi Novik has a wonderful alternative history series set during the Napoleonic wars (celebrating heroic virtues) and her work Spinning Silver is a Rumpelstiltskin retelling set in a land like Russia, featuring a Jewish protagonist and Russian ice elves. It's a thoughtful, beautifully written story.
I revisited several Lewis books last year and plan to do the same this year!
Always up for listening to how parents further down the road handle these things. I'm too focused on toilet training and a new walker over here! haha
I have a 9yo son who I have never managed to get into the Narnia books despite repeated attempts!
HOWEVER.
We had excellent success with “The Great Divorce” and “Mere Christianity” is definitely on the docket. We started the audiobook together in the car and he liked it but then we got distracted by other things.
No religious value but we are also having a VERY good time with Arthur Conan Doyle. He read A Study in Scarlet with his dad, and how we’re most of the way through the first short story collection. After that I think we will skip ahead to Hound of the Baskervilles, which is my personal favorite.
The Iliad has sex and violence but it’s the Iliad and he loves it. We’re about halfway through. When we eventually finish it we will move on to the Odyssey, then the Aeneid.
Shakespeare’s historical plays are also on the near-term docket. I’m thinking of the Henrys especially. We won’t read them though — going to watch them first!
Since he is skeptical of all fantasy after disliking Narnia so much I am not sure if I will be able to get him into Tolkien but we are going to try!
One of our all-time favorite series is not fiction, but Ralph Moody’s autobiography, the “Little Britches” series. It has so many wonderful examples of good character, ingenuity, integrity and is plain fun to boot. We’ve had so many conversations from it as a read aloud but would be equally good as a book for (especially boys) a young teen.
I read The Lord of the Rings when I was around thirteen. I don’t know if I got it on a deep level but for pure enjoyment it was a winner.
Oh, I just remembered a great series of books that I adored when I was this age--The Great Brain books by John D. Fitzgerald. The humor made them feel more like an adult read to me at the time. Sort of bridging that gap between children’s literature and YA. And they’re Catholic (or half anyway 😏).
Would the Father Brown mysteries by Chesterton be age appropriate? (I read them in high school so can’t remember if some themes were too dark.)
Definitely want to put in a bid for Discworld, especially with Tiffany Aching as an entry point for younger teens, who, if they like that, will race into the rest of them and be infinitely richer for the experience. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, too. The adult fiction that will draw them on. Consider also--mysteries. Series with a lot of entries to continue their middle-grade experience. After all, adults love that sense of abundance and discovery, too. For more “classic” classics, never discount the sheer power of giving a 13yo girl a copy of Jane Eyre and a copy of Pride & Prejudice and seeing which she prefers. And Dracula. Dracula is always a good time.
Also, very much based on my experience, If your teen isn’t interested in or isn’t comfortable with sex, they’ll probably just skim. If they are, then they have a lifetime of happiness in the romance section ahead of them and that’s a fine thing, too.
There's some YA fiction that's actually good. The Giver series by Lois Lowry comes to mind, and the Redwall and Castaways of the Flying Dutchman series by Brian Jacques (which is sometimes put in YA, sometimes in Adult). I'd classify Hatchet by Gary Paulson as YA too, and there's a couple passages from that that have stuck with me for years. And, strangely, anything written AFTER the year 2000 by Caroline B. Cooney (prior to that, she wrote a bunch of garbage, but then she...matured, I guess?).
Now, the Twilight and Divergent series? Pretty much oversexed twaddle. The Hunger Games? Vastly overrated (written at an obviously immature reading level…the movies are actually better). The overblown politically charged stuff that's blowing up local library shelves? I tend to think that stuff’s straight up propaganda.
I don't think YA as a subset of literature is worth tossing out wholesale, but I concede that a lot of it is, indeed, trash or else vastly inferior. I'll probably be introducing my kids to my favorites from that genre, but not allowing them to check out much else.
Thanks for asking! My favorites I read as an adult (to study genre as a writer) in classic British and other YA novels:
--I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith. I admit this one got me hooked on reading YA as it has imaginative girl trying to bust loose from the abandoned English castle her family lives in. Who doesn’t want that? Written in 1948. But do NOT watch any of the movie versions.
--Five on a Treasure Island - Enid Blyton, part of Famous Five series, illustrations by Eileen Soper. Published in 1942. I went looking for this after fondly remembering it with my childhood library. A series with same children (ages 5 to 11) going on simple adventures that get complicated. I was hooked. Can be read by 8 year olds.
--The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon. A 2003 Brit novel also made into a play. Certainly good for a thinking mystery dog lover.
--Rodzina - Karen Cushman. Not Brit, a very American story of the “orphan train” but told by a feisty and overweight Polish girl, who does eventually find a true home. Afterwards one can read or watch about the real orphan train.