[thingumbob]

Add in for the boys: The Count of Monte Cristo (my all time favorite), The Man in the Iron Mask, Treasure Island, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, and sometime later, Great Expectations, The Three Musketeers, Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Shogun.

For the girls: Little Women, Little House on the Prairie, Gone with the Wind, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Phantom of the Opera, and The Great Gatsby.

[niteowl77]

I was an early reader in a family that read, and I still enjoy it, though I gave up most fiction at one point, preferring history. As I near my three-score and ten, I get more like the Scottish stonemason/engineer Matthew Davidson in thinking the Bible is the only truly necessary book... and it would profit me more to concentrate on it.

I would toss in things like Doyle's "The White Company" and "The Complete Sherlock Holmes," along with lesser-known Twain works like "Roughing It" and "A Tramp Abroad." A lot of Kipling's stuff (like the collection "The Day's Work") is first-rate, but harder to access these days.

Some kids are not going to be fiction fans, and things like the (older) Golden Guides to Birds, Weather, etc are still good places to get them interested in nature. Horace Kephart's "Camping and Woodcraft" is dated but outdoorsy fun. Authors like L.T.C. Rolt and Dorothy Hartley are worth exploring.

[Melian]

I’m reading Great Expectations for the first time. There’s unexpected humor in it! And Joe wrings my heart.

[little jeremiah]

Lorna Doone. All books by John Buchan. Kidnapped and other books by Robert Louis Stevenson. I read when around 10-12 but boys would like them too.