The Storytelling Years

Geography, cultures, and landmarks in an illustrated reference format.

A pig, a spider, a barn. The first great American children's novel about love and loss.

The standard. Beautiful illustrations, accurate stories. Every educated child should know these myths.

The other half of the d'Aulaire pair. Thor, Odin, Loki, and the end of the world.

Almanzo Wilder's boyhood on a New York farm. The food descriptions alone are worth the price.

A small-town Ohio boy and a doughnut machine that won't stop. Quintessentially American humor.

The first of the Little House books. A Wisconsin childhood in the 1870s, rendered with extraordinary specificity.

A house painter ends up with twelve penguins. The film versions are not the book.

A widowed field mouse and a colony of hyper-intelligent rats. Newbery Medal, and earns it.

A neighborhood woman cures children of common vices through cheerful absurdity.

A small boy outwits a jungle full of wild animals to rescue a baby dragon. A perfect first chapter book.

The strongest girl in the world lives alone with a horse and a monkey. Pure joy.

Any good illustrated edition. DePaola's collections are excellent; Vision Books and Ignatius Press also publish solid series for this age.

A mouse-sized boy on a New York adventure. Brief, strange, beautiful.

Four orphan siblings make a home in an abandoned boxcar. Stick to the original four books; later sequels were written by others.

Short stories and poems organized around courage, honesty, work, and other virtues. A good bedtime reader.

The seven-book gateway to the Christian imagination. Start with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

A Connecticut cricket finds himself in a Times Square newsstand. Charming and surprisingly literary.

The second Pooh book, ending with the most famous goodbye in children's literature.

A mute trumpeter swan finds his voice. White at his most tender.

Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad on the riverbank. A lasting picture of friendship and home.

Read the Milne, not the Disney. The original sentences are the point.

Stevenson's verses for children. Memorize a few; they will stay for life.

The American narrative poem to memorize first. "Listen, my children, and you shall hear..."

Sixteen lines of quiet perfection. Short enough to memorize in a single sitting.

Frost's most famous poem, more ambiguous than most people think. Worth knowing by heart.

The lion and the mouse. The tortoise and the hare. The boy who cried wolf. A child of eight can hold the moral of an Aesop fable in his head for a lifetime; choose a translation that ends with the moral plainly stated.

Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Cinderella, The Bremen Town Musicians, Rumpelstiltskin. Read the older translations — Margaret Hunt, or the Pantheon edition with its notes. The Disney versions are not the same stories.

The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen, The Ugly Duckling, The Nightingale, The Emperor's New Clothes. Where Grimm collected, Andersen invented — these are literary fairy tales by a single Danish hand, sadder and stranger than the German ones. Read Jean Hersholt's translations or the Tiina Nunnally edition.

A pig who wants to be a sheepdog. Gentle, beautiful, unexpectedly profound.

The Hanna-Barbera animated version. The 2006 live-action is also acceptable.

A father searches for his son across the ocean. Pixar at its emotional peak.

A young witch sets out on her own. Quiet, formative, and surprisingly substantial.

Disney's live-action peak. A practically perfect family musical.

The gateway Ghibli film. Two sisters, a forest spirit, a sick mother, rural Japan.

A Texas boy and his dog. Be ready for tears at the end.

Disney's second feature and arguably its best. Conscience, temptation, transformation.

A goldfish princess and a small boy on the coast. Pure visual wonder for younger viewers.

A rat who wants to cook in Paris. The closing monologue is one of the great defenses of art and criticism.

A shipwrecked family builds a treehouse civilization. The platonic ideal of family adventure.

Errol Flynn in Technicolor. The definitive Robin Hood film and a perfect first classic.

A superhero family. Brad Bird's ode to excellence and family loyalty.

Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles. The unbeatable family classic.

The Trapp family, the Anschluss, and the hills are alive. Pre-war Catholic Austria in three hours of song.

The Pixar foundation. Watch the first three as a trilogy; skip the fourth.

The first ten minutes alone are worth the price of admission. A widower lifts his house with balloons.

The BBC nature series that reset what was possible. Eleven episodes covering every major habitat on the planet. Watch one a week with the lights down.

The oceans, ten years on from the original Blue Planet. Underwater cinematography that genuinely had not existed before.

The Emperor penguins' annual march to their inland breeding grounds and back. About endurance and parental love as much as it is about birds.

A meadow in France, filmed in extreme close-up: insects, snails, dewdrops, a sudden thunderstorm. Almost no narration. The natural world made strange again.

The national dessert. Worth making the crust from scratch at least once.

A real baguette from a real bakery, with good butter and flaky salt.

Real German sausage, ideally on a fresh roll with sauerkraut.

Charcoal, not gas, at least once. The smoke is part of the meal.

The Toll House recipe, made together. A weekly ritual is not too much.

Fried dough with cinnamon sugar. Ideally with hot chocolate for dipping.

Battered cod, thick chips, malt vinegar. Wrap in paper if possible.

The American comfort lunch. Butter the bread, not the pan.

The French version: actual chocolate melted into hot milk, not powder. Try Angelina's in Paris if you ever can.

Two cakes from the same tradition. The French galette des rois — puff pastry around almond frangipane — is eaten at Epiphany, and a small porcelain fève baked inside makes whoever finds it king for the day. The Louisiana king cake travels the same idea into Carnival: a braided cinnamon ring iced in purple, green, and gold, with a tiny plastic baby tucked in for Mardi Gras.

The real version with a roux. Box mac is fine, but a child should know the difference.

Tomato, mozzarella, basil. The platonic pizza, named for an Italian queen.

Real batter, not from a box. The first cooking competence a child should own.

Soft, salted, ideally Bavarian. Mustard on the side.

Graham cracker, Hershey's, toasted marshmallow. Requires a real fire, not a candle.

Cream first or jam first depending on whether you ask Devon or Cornwall. Both are correct.

The Italian-American Sunday meal. A different dish from real Italian Bolognese, and worth knowing both.

Real tortillas, not crunchy shells. Carnitas or carne asada beats ground beef.

The full ceremony with incense, candles, and chant. Easter Vigil especially: the entire Christian story in one night.

Real animals if possible. The story made physical and present.

Nine innings, peanuts and Cracker Jack, the seventh-inning stretch. The pace is part of the lesson.

Watch animals being fed, fruit being picked, work being done. Where food comes from.

A real municipal fireworks show, not backyard sparklers. The civic ritual of being American.

Da-da-da-DAH. The famous one, but listen to all four movements.

The accessible Beethoven symphony for children. A walk in the country, a thunderstorm, a hymn of thanksgiving.

The original Western music. Solesmes recordings or Norcia monks for a starting point.

The Four Freedoms, the Saturday Evening Post covers, the civil rights paintings. American twentieth-century iconography.

The 21 Franciscan missions from San Diego to Sonoma. Walk the grounds; pray in the chapels.