My All Time Favorites:

  • Richard Adams, Watership Down

  • Jeanne Birdsall, The Penderwicks

  • Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

  • Richard Chase, The Jack Tales

  • Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising

  • Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

  • Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

  • Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain

  • Lev Grossman, The Magicians series

  • Lois Lowry, The Giver

  • Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

  • Philip Reeve, The Hungry Cities Chronicles

  • J.K. Rowling, The Harry Potter series

  • Neil Shusterman, The Everlost series

  • Jonathan Stroud, Lockwood & Co series

  • J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

 

Must Reads for Younger Readers:

  • Tom Angleberger, The Strange Case of Origami Yoda

  • Cece Bell, El Deafo

  • Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

  • Andrew S. Chilton, The Goblin's Puzzle

  • John Christopher, The White Mountains

  • Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl

  • Frances O’Roark Dowell, Dovey Coe

  • Nancy Farmer, The House of the Scorpion

  • Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

  • Diana Wynne Jones, The Chronicles of Chrestomanci

  • Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

  • Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle In Time

  • Stephen Messer, The Death of Yorik Mortwell

  • Garth Nix, Sabriel

  • Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats  of NIMH

  • Kenneth Oppel, Airborn

  • Michelle Paver, The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness

  • Richard Peck, A Long Way From Chicago

  • Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game

  • Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus series

  • Louis Sacher, Holes

  • Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

  • Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me

  • Scott Westerfeld, Leviathan

Must Reads for Older Readers:

  • M.T. Anderson, Feed

  • Paolo Bacigalupi, Shipbreaker

  • Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

  • Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

  • Suzanne Collins, Hunger Games

  • James Dashner, The Maze Runner

  • Kathleen Duey, Skin Hunger

  • Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

  • Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World

  • Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere and Stardust

  • Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man

  • David Macinnis Gill, Soul Enchilada

  • John Green, Looking For Alaska

  • J.J. Johnson, This Girl Is Different, The Theory of Everything, and Believarexic

  • Stephen King, The Dark Tower Series

  • Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

  • Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

  • William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways

  • Cormac McCarthy, The Road

  • Yann Martel, Life of Pi

  • Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now

  • Carrie Ryan, The Forest of Hands and Teeth

  • John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley

  • Laini Taylor, The Daughter of Smoke and Bone