In his report James Madison Elementary School: A Curriculum for American Students, U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett suggests reading materials to accompany English instruction across grades K-8. Following are his recommendations:
Kindergarten through 3rd grade
Behind the Back of the Mountain: Black Folktales from Southern Africa, Verna Aardema
Aesop for Children, Aesop
Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Hans Christian Andersen
Anno’s Alphabet and Anno’s Counting House, Mitsumasa Anno
Wiley and the Hairy Man, Molly Bang
Once in Puerto Rico, Pura Belpre
Madeline books, Ludwig Bemelmans
The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Susan Blair
Freddy the Detective, Walter R. Brooks
The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Robert Browning
The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant, Jean de Brunhoff
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and The Little House, Virginia Lee Burton
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
Jack and the Three Sillies, Richard Chase
The Ramona and Henry Huggins books, Beverly Cleary
Adventures of Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi
Chanticleer and the Fox, Barbara Cooney
The Courage of Sarah Noble, Alice Dalgliesh
Book of Nursery and Mother Goose Rhymes, Marguerite De Angeli
Drummer Hoff, Barbara Emberley
Ask Mister Bear, Marjorie Flack
The Whipping Boy, Sid Fleischman
Millions of Cats, Wanda Gag
The Three Bears, retold by Paul Galdone
Stone Fox, John Reynolds Gardiner
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
The Wonder Book, Nathaniel Hawthorne
One Fine Day, Nonny Hogrogrian
Little Red Riding Hood, retold by Trina Schart Hyman
John Henry: An American Legend and The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats
Pecos Bill, Steven Kellogg
Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
The Arabian Nights and Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, Andrew Lang
Piping Down the Valley Wild, Nancy Larrick
The Story of Ferdinand, Munro Leaf
Pippi Longstocking books, Astrid Lindgren
Swimmy, Leo Lionni
Frog and Toad Together, Arnold Lobel
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Betty MacDonald
Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal, Robert McCloskey
Every Time I Climb a Tree, poems by David McCord
Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti, retold by Gerald McDermott
When We Were Very Young and Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne
Amelia Bedelia, Peggy Parish
Cinderella, Charles Perrault
The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter
Ride a Purple Pelican and Read Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young, Jack Prelutsky
Clementine and She Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain, Robert Quackenbush
Curious George books, H.A. Rey
The Dancing Stars: An Iroquois Legend, Anne Rockwell
Where the Wild Things Are and Chicken Soup with Rice, Maurice Sendak
The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Horton Hatches the Egg, and others by Dr. Seuss
Caps for Sale, Esphyr Slobodkina
Noah’s Ark, Peter Spier
Abel’s Island and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, William Steig
A Child’s Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson
East O’ the Sun and West O’ the Moon, Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
Brian Wildsmith’s Illustrated Bible Stories, Philip Turner
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Judith Viorst
Ira Sleeps Over, Bernard Waber
Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, E.B. White
Little House books, Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams
Crow Boy, Taro Yashima
Owl Moon and The Seeing Stick, Jane Yolen
Rumpelstiltskin, retold by Paul O. Zelinsky
4th through 6th grades
Born Free, Joy Adamson
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Sounder, William H. Armstrong
Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt
Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
Crickets and Bullfrogs and Whispers of Thunder: Poems and Pictures, Harry Behn
Stories of the Gods and Heroes, Sally Benson
Sundiata: The Epic of the Lion King, Roland Bertol
The Dog Days of Arthur Cane, T. Ernesto Bethancourt
Doctor Coyote: A Native American Aesop’s Fables, retold by John Bierhorst
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Summer of the Swans, Betsy Byars
A New Treasury of Children’s Poetry: Old Favorites and New Discoveries, edited by Joanna Cole
Prairie Songs, Pamela Conrad
James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
The Black Stallion, Walter Farley
Thor and the Giants, Anita Feagles
Great Brain books, John D. Fitzgerald
Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh
Johnny Tremain, Esther Forbes
Selections from Poor Richard’s Almanack, Benjamin Franklin
Lincoln: A Photobiography, Russell Freedman
And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?, Jean Fritz
A Swinger of Birches: Poems of Robert Frost for Young People, Robert Frost
Julie of the Wolves, Jean Craighead1pGeorge
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Mythology, Edith Hamilton
The People Could Fly: American Black Folk Tales, Virginia Hamilton
Misty of Chincoteague and Brighty of the Grand Canyon, Marguerite Henry
At the Top of My Voice and Other Poems, Felice Holmon
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
The Trumpeter of Krakow, Eric Kelly
The Jungle Books and Captains Courageous, Rudyard Kipling
Lassie Come-Home, Eric Knight
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
Tales from Shakespeare, Charles and Mary Lamb
The Rainbow Fairy books, Andrew Lang
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
The Call of the Wild, Jack London
Castle and Cathedral, David Macauley
Sarah, Plain and Tall, Patricia MacLachlan
Paul Bunyan Swings His Axe, Dell J. McCormick
Snow Treasure, Marie McSwigan
The Borrowers, Mary Norton
Hailstones and Halibut Bones, poems by Mary O’Neill
Bridge to Terabithia and The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson
Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Edgar Allan Poe
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
Bambi, Felix Salten
Abe Lincoln Grows Up and Rootabaga Stories, Carl Sandburg
Cricket in Times Square, George Selden
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing up in Warsaw, Isaac Bashevis Singer
Call it Courage, Armstrong Sperry
Heidi, Johanna Spyri
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
American Tall-Tale Animals, Adrien Stoutenburg
The Nutcracker: A Story and a Ballet, Ellen Switzer
What’s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin? and Where Was Patrick Henry on the 29th of May?, Margot Tomes
Swiss Family Robinson, Johann Wyss
7th through 8th grades
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon, Jack Bennett
A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl’s Journal, 1830-32, Joan W. Blos
The Moves Make the Man, Bruce Brooks
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
Neighbor Rosicky, Willa Cather
The Dark Is Rising, Susan Cooper
The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
Madame Curie: A Biography, Eve Curie
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
I’m Nobody! Who are you?, Emily Dickinson
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Lost World, Arthur Conan Doyle
The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell
The Fun of It: Random Records of My Own Flying and of Women in Aviation, Amelia Earhart
The Refugee Summer, Edward Fenton
Washington: The Indispensable Man, James Thomas Flexner
Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
You Come Too, Robert Frost
Spin a Soft Black Song, Nikki Giovanni
A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
The Gift of the Magi and Other Stories, O. Henry
Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl
Legend Days, Jamake Highwater
Thunder of the Gods, Dorothy Hosford
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, Washington Irving
Story of My Life, Helen Keller
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Good Night, Mr. Tom, Michelle Magorian
Mutiny on the Bounty, Charles Nordhoff and J.N. Hall
Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O’Dell
The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Emma Orczy
The Complete Tales and Poems, Edgar Allan Poe
The Chosen, Chaim Potok
The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Light in the Forest, Conrad Richter
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Early Moon, Carl Sandburg
Shane, Jack Schaefer
Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott
Plays and sonnets, William Shakespeare
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Upon the Head of the Goat, Aranka Siegal
The Red Pony and The Pearl, John Steinbeck
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred Taylor
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
Journey Home, Yoshiko Uchida
The Story of Mankind, Hendrik Van Loon
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mysterious Island, and Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne
Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
The Sword in the Stone and The Once and Future King, T.H. White
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
The Virginian, Owen Wister
Dragonwings, Laurence Yep
