Great Authors You Want On Your Child’s Bookshelf

Knowing the great children’s authors makes it easier to select what to add to your child’s bookshelf.

A child’s taste in reading is formed in the right or wrong direction while he is under the influence of his parents. Hopefully, parents will invest the time and energy of those formative years and keep their children home to teach them themselves. Sadly, many children lose their way with indoctrination even in the youngest grades in school, and developing a taste for the sexualized trash presented to them.

Without forethought, many parents of young children default to the cheap, trashy, and unwholesome books that have become so common today because often that is all they are aware of.

The bookshelf at the library is full of them and public schools are pushing them on even the youngest of school children.

One of the top desires I had in teaching our children at home was to create a spiritually and emotionally nourishing environment of learning and discovery. We desired to see:

• development of noble character
• spiritual discernment
• a deep sense of family
• self-control
• a sense of beauty

And certain books and authors were one vehicle to take us there. A love of reading the best literature doesn’t come without planning.

The family couch is the very ‘seat’ of learning and family affection! Read-alouds and Bible-reading happens there.

I can’t begin to count the hours of devouring books with titles like Wisdom and the Millers, Richard Scarry’s Best Children’s Books Ever!, Pilgrim’s Progress, Brighty Of the Grand Canyon, and The Bears Of Blue River.

The wonderful book series’ which enriched not only our minds but our hearts include books by such authors as A.M. Anderson and Edith McCall (true stories of mapping the West, forts, rivers, and expeditions through the mountains), James Herriot, Douglas Bond, Marguerite D’Angeli, Beatrix Potter, Thornton Burgess, and Arthur S. Maxwell (Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories).

More authors (from youngest audience to older) that are really fabulous include (see more titles by clicking the link):

• Jan Brett (includes board books)
• Robert McCloskey (creates wonder in a younger child and develops logic in the Homer Price books)
• Virginia Lee Burton
• Patricia St. John
• Alice Dalgleish
• Elizabeth Yates
• Rosemary Sutcliff (older children’s historical adventure novels)

We delighted and were captivated through the years by Pathway readers (they are simply excellent for young readers) and Lamplighter books (such as Teddy’s Button, Titus Comrade Of the Cross, Jessica’s Mother, etc.). Later, we loved to read aloud the YWAM missionary stories (Lords Of the Earth, Peace Child)…always full of adventure and the power of God’s mighty hand working around the world.

Other Delightful Reading

• The Green Ember – S.D. Smith
• Greek Slave Boy – Lillian Carroll
• The Bronze Bow – Elizabeth George Speare
• I Saw Three Ships – Elizabeth Goudge
• A Tree for Peter – Kate Seredy
• A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
• The Emperor’s New Clothes – Hans Christian Anderson
• The Children’s Book of Virtues – William J. Bennett
• By Right of Conquest – G.A. Henty
• The Christmas Stove – Alta Halverson Seymour
• On the Far Side of the Mountain – Jean Craighead George
• Wizard of Oz – Frank Baum
• Vinegar Boy – Alberta Hawse
• Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

Since our children were little ones, we’ve curled up with books and thoroughly enjoyed entering the world of the wonderful characters in our stories. While there are many benefits to reading aloud, to me the most wonderful benefit would have to be the  discussions around the dinner table. Rarely do we just read a book without talking about the morals and worldview that the book discusses.

Are there other noteworthy books for children that you can recommend to us?

“A love of reading is an acquired taste, not an instinctive preference. The habit of reading is formed in childhood; and a child’s taste in reading is formed in the right direction or in the wrong one while he is under the influence of his parents; and they are directly responsible for the shaping and cultivating of that taste.” – H. Clay Trumbull, Hints on Child Training (1890)

“The most important work you and I will ever do, will be within the walls of our own homes.”  ~Harold B. Lee

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