Holidays are here again! Have your parents made any plans for you? Well, here’s a plan you can make for yourself, a plan that involves adventure, excitement, fun, games, mystery and fantasy; a plan that will take you to all kinds of places where you meet a wide range of people from the sublime to the ridiculous; a plan that will give you unlimited joy at hardly any cost. Yes, you guessed right; the plan is to read books. Fill your holidays with books and here is a list you’ll love…
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* Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe (1719)
* Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
* Charles Dickens:
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* R.M. Ballantyne: The Coral Island (1857)
* L.M. Alcott: Little Women (1858)
* Susan Coolidge: What Katy Did (1872)
* Jules Verne: Around the World in Eighty Days (1873)
* Anna Sewell: Black Beauty (1877)
* Mark Twain: The Prince and the Pauper (1882)
* Carlo Collodi: Pinocchio (1883)
* R.L. Stevenson: Treasure Island (1883)
* Jerome K. Jerome: Three Men in a Boat (1889)
* George and Weedon Grossmith: The Diary of a Nobody (1892)
* Rudyard Kipling: The Jungle Book (1894)
* L. Frank Baum: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
* Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
* E. Nesbit: The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904)
* L.M. Montgomery: Anne of the Green Gables (1908)
* Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows (1908)
* Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden (1911)
* Jean Webster: Daddy-Long-Legs (1912)
* A.A. Milne: Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)
* P.L. Travers: Mary Poppins (1934)
* James Hilton: Goodbye, Mr Chips (1934)
* R.K. Narayan: Swami and Friends (1935)
* Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (1947)
* C.S. Lewis: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)
* E.B. White: Charlotte’s Web (1952)
* Madeline L’Engle: A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
* Roald Dahl: Matilda (1988) and all the other 19 children’s books by Dahl
* Neil Gaiman: Coraline (2002)
* Sonya Hartnett: The Silver Donkey (2004)
* Ruskin Bond: Mr Oliver’s Diary (2010)
* Ranjit Lal: Faces in the Water (2010)
* Frank Cottrell Boyce: The Unforgotten Coat (2012)
And of course the humorous school stories by P.G. Wodehouse, Frank Richards’ Billy Bunter series, Richmal Crompton’s William series, Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings series, books by Enid Blyton, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series, Jeff Kinny’s Wimpy Kid series, not forgetting the perennial classics like The Arabian Nights and the Panchatantra …
This list is just a crutch to help you along. Go to the libraries, visit the homes of friends of who have well-stocked shelves of books and don’t forget to make frequent trips to bookshops.
Browse, discover new titles, enjoy the company of books, beg, borrow, buy and read… Happy holidays!
(Khyrunnisa is an academic and author of the Butterfingers series)