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Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
Science-fiction & fantasy literature: a critical list with discussions.
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Speculative-Fiction Works Suitable For Young Readers
“And then we’d travel very far
To where the magic countries are
That you and I will never see,
And choose the loveliest gifts for you, from me.”
– The Phoenix and the Carpet (from the dedication)
E. Nesbit
Who Are “Younger” Readers?
“Younger” readers can include anyone from those so little they must be read to on up to those in late adolesence. Put another way, they are all readers whose passage through life has not yet fully equipped them with such experience as to allow them to rightly grasp the significances and perspectives in certain sorts of complex situations and relationships.
Readers from perhaps roughly puberty and up are, if they be wise and perceptive for their ages, probably capable of handling even the gravest and grimmest of “adult” fictions without harm, but the question arises as to how much of the real juice of the heavier works they can extract to their profit. Perhaps the worst thing that can happen between a young reader and a given book is a reading that stamps the book as mediocre in that young reader’s esteem because she or he has not that depth of experience needed to properly appreciate what the author is doing and conveying—such that that reader will not again return to that book for many a year, if ever, and so lose its adult potential. That is, I think, the chief reason we need to have some care about what books we offer to “young adult” readers, not some fear that their wee little minds (as too many condescendingly see it) might be polluted or corrupted by some solid understanding of the real world they are going to have to live in for a good many years to come.
Remember that these works are all culled from this site’s master list, all of which are books I think rewarding for sophisticated adults. None of these, in my opinion, is a book “just for children”.
I think the crux lies in the word charm. Today, that word has a variety of senses; as a the noun, the foremost (per the American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Edition) are The power or quality of pleasing or delighting; appeal and the closely related A quality that pleases or attracts; a delightful characteristic. The underlying roots are “Middle English charme, magic spell, from Old French, from Latin carmen, incantation”. As a verb, the senses are equally illuminating: To delight or fascinate; To induce by means of strong personal attractiveness; To cast or seem to cast a spell on; bewitch. Note that while in English it is not unusual to say something like “I’m charmed to meet you” or “How charming to meet you”, in French the normal polite form (often used by English speakers who want to seem soigné is enchanté, figuratively meaning “delighted” but literally meaning “enchanted”—that is, put under a spell.
The point of that digression is to emphasize that a good part of the appeal to adults of works nominally targeted at pre-adult readers is the charm the adult perceives in them. (When charm is “a good part” but not all of a pre-adult book’s appeal, the rest will almost always be some material therein expressly aimed at adults but which will fly right over the heads of its nominal readership: a sort of gentle “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” quality.)
Most if not all of the books listed here are, I reckon, suitable for pre-adults at one or another level. I have not tried to make fine distinctions in the manner of publishers, who have the stupifying gall to class books by exact and narrow age ranges. Nonetheless, there are distinctions: you can read The Water Babies to pretty much any child old enough to understand speech, whereas Pratchett’s “Johnny Maxwell” books would probably be lost on a pre-pubescent child. Moreover, the book-vs-age curve is not usually a straight line: something like, say, Edith Nesbit’s books may appeal to a young child (around the age of the protagonists), but seem “childish” and unappealing to a teen, then later, with adult insight, again become charming and pleasant to read. For any given book, use your common sense if you know the book, and look through it a bit if you don’t.
(A useful page I ran across is Recommended Children’s Books - Novels (an archived PDF file), by Todd Klein, that has a heavy focus on fantastical works; it includes many from these lists, but a lot more as well, not all of which I would recommend as top-flight, but none of which is dreadful; a nice, thoughtful resource.)
(The link above is to the preferred-edition one-volume omnibus; the links below are to the individual books.) The character “Peter Pan” first appeared in an 1902 adult novel by Barrie titled The Little White Bird, in which Peter Pan is described in a story told to a child. In 1904, Barrie wrote the famous play, “Peter Pan”; in 1906, a prose text—like the original description but quite unlike the play—was published under the title Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens; in 1911, he turned the play into a book called Peter and Wendy, which is now usually just called Peter Pan and is the widely known form of the tale. As with most “children’s books”, publishers repeatedly show their veneration for a classic by chopping it up or dumbing it down, or both; don’t ask me how, or why, you “dumb down” a book meant for, and very successful with, small children—ask a publisher.)
The Oz Books:
(The link above is to a single-volume 15-book omnibus of all of Baum’s own Oz tales; if you prefer individual copies, the list below links to the preferred Dover editions. But I also much recommend The Annotated Wizard of Oz.)
Bellairs, John ****
(Bellairs was primarily an author of “juveniles”—or perhaps “young adult” books—and while most or all of those have some charm, only a couple—the first two, written directly after his adult works—really capture the strengths of his best writing, and only those two are listed below.)
Collodi, Carlo *
(There are countless bastardizations of the original Pinocchio tale; seek out only an authentic translation of Collodi’s actual, complete work—no more, no less. There are a few acceptable editions; the one listed below may be the best—the translation is by Carol della Chiesa and the illustrations are the classics by Attilio Mussino. MacMillan has been producing new editions about every generation since the first in 1929; the linked one is their 1989 deluxe “Big Pinocchio” edition (a slightly larger reprint of their 1969 edition). This is, of course a “children’s book”, but rather less so than you may think.)
Wind in the Willows (Even discarding any edition that is at all abridged, one is still faced with a tsunami of editions that differ significantly only in their illustrator. The original was E. H. Shepard, and many still think him the best; but there are Arthur Rackham, Michael Hague, Nancy Barnhart, Charles Van Sandwyk, and virtually countless others. Also, since there is in general very little difference in price between softcover and hardcover editions, the latter would be the clear choice. There are still numerous candidates even after all that filtering, but after hours of research, I opted for the “preferred edition” linked above.)
A Kingdom Far and Clear: The Complete Swan Lake Trilogy (This is a generally well-written series, supposedly “for children” though well readable by adults;
but be aware that it takes a sharp polemical right turn toward the end, belying that “for children”.)
Jones, Diana Wynne *
(Her books are all technically “young adult” or, in some cases, classed “juvenile”; I think them reasonably entertaining to adults.)
Milne, A. A. ****
(Children’s books. There are countless bastardizations and chop-ups of the original tales; seek out only authentic, unedited versions of Milne’s actual works—no more, no less—preferably with the original illustrations.)
The World of Winnie-the-Pooh (The link is to the preferred omnibus edition, containing the two works listed below.)
(Nesbit’s books are all “children’s books” as Oz or Pooh or Alice are “children’s books”. Much of Nesbit’s work is not truly fantasy but reads much like it; her several delightful mainstream works were omitted here with regret.)
The Five Children (an omnibus of the three novels linked separately below)
Oz, others **
(These are “canonical” Oz books (aka “The Famous Forty”, but see below) by authors other than L. Frank Baum or Ruth Plumly Thompson; there are numerous further Oz works that are “non-canonical” but close to the canon, plus a host of others ranging from well-meant but ill-made tributes to outright travesties.)
McGraw, Eloise Jarvis & Wagner, Lauren McGraw: Merry-Go-Round in Oz(The following three books by Sherwood Smith have been endorsed by the L. Frank Baum Family Trust as canonical, but are 21st century additions to the canon; some do not like them. The reviews suffice to greatly discourage me: modern teens with dysfunctional-family issues? In Oz? Really?)
Pinkwater, Daniel **
(Because Pinkwater’s several YA novels—screamingly funny—are short and are collected in omnibus works, I list only those omnibus volumes—but there’s a lot more Pinkwater out there.)
5 Novels (an omnibus containing the novels listed below)
The Bromeliad Trilogy[YA]: (A preferred-edition omnibus containing the novels listed below.)
Truckers
Diggers
Wings
The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy[YA]: (The link is to a preferred-edition hardcover omnibus of the three novels listed below, but I also link them separately.)
Wilde, Oscar **
(Considering that one can get a preferred edition of all of Wilde’s works for a modest amount, it seems silly to link any individual works. In the omnibus volume listed below, I have called out only those component works that would be, by themselves, listed on this site—but all of Wilde is worth reading.)
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