Classics

Time-tested & family-proven adventures and tales, with at least a spark of magic, personification of animals, a feeling of fables and fairy tales, or some other fantastic trait.

See also Newbery Awards.

Adventures of Pinocchio — Carlo Collodi.
Pinocchio, a wooden marionette with a penchant for finding trouble, wants to become a real boy.

Aesop's Fables — Aesop.
Animal tales that contain a moral and are based directly or indirectly on Greek tradition.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll.
When Alice falls down a rabbit hole into a wonderland, her world turns completely topsy-turvy.

Bed-Knobs and Broomsticks — Mary Norton

Blue Fairy Book — Andrew Lang.
Contains well-known fairy tales.

The Borrowers — Mary Norton.
Tiny people living in nooks and crannies and hiding places borrow such things as thimbles and postage stamps to use in their own homes.

Charlotte's Web — E.B. White.
Charlotte, a spider, works to save the life of Wilbur, a little pig who is destined for slaughter.

Children of Green Knowe — L.M Boston.
Tolly comes to live with his great-grandmother at the ancient house of Green Knowe and becomes friends with three children who lived there in the seventeenth century; together they break a gypsy curse on Green Knowe.

Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens.
Three spirits visit the stingy Scrooge to change his hard-heartedness and his future.

Cinderella and Other Tales — Charles Perrault.
A collection of fairy tales.

Cricket in Times Square — George Selden.
Chester, a country cricket, unwittingly ends up in New York City, where he makes friends with Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat.

Dr Doolittle — Hugh Lofting

Enchanted Castle — E Nesbit.

Fairy Tales — Hans Christian Andersen.
Original fairy tales that are a mingling of folklore and fantasy.

Five Children and It — E. Nesbit.
When four brothers and sisters discover a Psammead (sand-fairy) in the gravel pit near the country house where they are staying, they have no way of knowing all the adventures and trouble its wish-granting will bring them.

Grimm's Fairy Tales — the Brothers Grimm.
A collection of folk and fairy tales by the brothers Grimm.

Half Magic — Edgar Eager
Four children looking forward to an ordinary summer enjoy a series of fantastic adventures by wishing on an ancient coin that only grants half-magic.

Hob and the Goblins — William Mayne
Hob, the friendly spirit who lives under the stairs and protects the house, must do battle with a variety of evil beings trying to take control of his family's home.

James and the Giant Peach — Roald Dahl.
James has adventures after rolling away from his mean aunts in a giant peach.

Jungle Book — Rudyard Kipling.
Mowgli finds refuge with a family of wolves and learns the lore of the jungle from various animals.

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Knee-Knock Rise — Natalie Babbitt
Everyone else in the village is afraid of the creature who supposedly dwells at the top of Kneeknock Rise but young Egan investigates for himself.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe — C.S. Lewis.
Four children enter a cursed land through a wardrobe, and seek to overthrow the White Witch with the help of Aslan the lion. The first in the Chronicles of Narnia series.

Lord of the Rings — J.R.R. Tolkien.

Mary Poppins — P.L. Travers.
The intriguing adventures of an incredible nursemaid and her charges, the Banks children of London.

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Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh — Robert C. O'Brien.
A widowed mouse in search of help for her family visits the strange, wise rats of NIMH.

Neverending Story — Michael Ende

Perilous Gard — Elizabeth Pope.
In 1558 a young girl becomes involved in a series of events that involves the last practitioners of druidic magic.

Peter Pan — J.M. Barrie.
Peter Pan, the orphan boy who would not grow up, takes the Darling children away with him to Never-Never Land.

Phantom Tollbooth — Norton Juster.
Since he owns a magic tollbooth, Milo takes a journey through Dictionopolis, the land of words and numbers.

Princess and the Goblin — George MacDonald
A little princess is protected by her friend Curdie from the goblin miners who live beneath the castle.

Prydain Cycle — Lloyd Alexander.
Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper to a famous oracular sow, sets out on a mission to fight the forces of evil and save the land of Prydain.

Rip Van Winkle — Washington Irving.
A lazy man falls asleep in the Catskill mountains and wakes years later to find the world very much changed.

Stuart Little — E.B. White.
The adventures of a debonair mouse that sets out to find his friend, a little bird that stayed in his garden once.

Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People — L Frank Baum.
Fourteen magical adventures in the land of Mo.

Sword in the Stone — T.H. White.
A young boy discovers that he is destined to be a great King.

Tuck Everlasting — Natalie Babbit.
The Tuck family is confronted with an agonizing situation when they discover that a ten-year-old girl and a malicious stranger have discovered their secret about a spring whose water prevents one from ever growing old.

Wind in the Willows — Kenneth Grahame.
Mole goes adventuring on the River and in the Woods and makes great new friends in Rat, Badger, Toad and others.

Winnie the Pooh — A.A. Milne.
The adventures of Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore, Owl, and friends.

Wizard of EarthseaUrsula K LeGuin.
A boy grows to manhood while attempting to subdue the evil he unleashed while an apprentice to the Master Wizard.

Wizard of Oz — L Frank Baum.
The adventures of Dorothy in the Land of Oz with the Wizard, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion.

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