Books Your Kid Should Read

The Wicked Enchantment
by Margot Benary-Isbert
1955

So, it's a new year, a new president (yay!), and you're looking for something new to read to or with your kids. Here's a book that might be a little hard to find, but is well worth the hunt. Translated from the original German, Wicked Enchantment tells the story of a girl named Anemone and her dog Winnie, as they embark on a sort of feminist modern-day Cinderella/adventure story. Intrigued? Anemone's dear father has just remarried after the death of Anemone's mother, and in true fairy-tale fashion, the stepmother and her son, Erwin, are terrible additions to the family. Erwin terrorizes all the family animals and shifts the blame to Anemone whenever he's caught out, but (of course) no one will believe that Anemone is suffering from anything other than jealousy. Finally things get so bad that Anemone lights out for her Aunt's house across town, a utopian abode where cats and mice live peacefully together and everything is more magical than it at first seems. With the help of her Aunt, Anemone disguises herself and her dog as a young boy and sets out to determine just what the heck is going on with her new relations. What she uncovers is an evil plot that threatens the entire village of Vogelsang, and forces Anemone to draw on all her intelligence, courage, and common sense (qualities she fortunately possesses in abundance).

This is a book I found by chance at a public library sale when I was in my teens; I picked it up because it looked like it might be interesting, and the book was soon a family favorite. If you're looking for well-written fiction centering around strong, interesting female characters, this book will be right up your alley.


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The Dark is Rising Sequence
By Susan Cooper
1965-77

I didn't stumble on The Dark is Rising sequence until I was a senior in high school, which is exceedingly odd if you know what my reading tastes were back then (and still are, if I'm being brutally honest). But it wasn't until I was living with my parents in Salzburg during the autumn of my senior year that I happened upon the books at the American Library. Desperate for some new leisure reading material (you can only pack so many books when you're traveling overseas for a semester), I took a chance on the books, and oh, how glad I am that I did! Cooper's books are firmly in the lineage of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein, but set in the late 60s and 70s, so a little more modern. They deal with all the classic british fantasy themes: Arthurian legend, the eternal fight between good and evil, the alliance of mortals with forces beyond mortal knowing, etc., etc. Your standard stuff. But wow, is the writing ever good. These books will transport you to the shores of Cornwall; to Welsh farm country; to the coziness of a British village in the depths of winter. Old traditions like the building of the greenman and the legend of Herne the Hunter are effortlessly threaded through the plot, grounding it in British folkloric tradition. The main characters are the three Drew children, caught up in the fight between dark and light through their "Uncle" Merriman (a loosely disguised Merlin character), and Will Stanton, an 11-year-old boy who discovers on his eleventh birthday that he is the last of the "Old Ones," mystical beings who possess great magical powers and fight for the light. Sure, sure, it can sound hokey if you're a jaded Gen-X formerly hip parental unit. But if you're an imaginative 11-18-year-old, this stuff is pure magic. A great option for kids who've gotten through Harry Potter and are looking for something in the same vein.

The Diddakoi
by Rumer Godden
1972

Rumer Godden is on my top ten list of the all-time best children's book authors around, so it's a shame that she's known primarily in the States as the inspiration for Demi Moore's and Bruce Willis's daughter's name. (No, really: that's where they got it.) Godden, a British author, wrote books for children and adults from the 1930s all the way until her death in the late 1990s, but her best stuff for kids (in this blogger's opinion) was published in the 60s and 70s. The Diddakoi, which won the Whitbread Award, tells the story of Kizzy Lovell, a gypsy child whose world is turned upside down when her beloved grandmother dies and she's force to leave her traditional lifestyle and start attending regular school as a ward of the county. Godden has a real feeling for culture clashes of this kind, and Kizzy's story is treated with sensitivity and affection. Godden's distinctive style really draws the reader into the story, making it feel immediate and vital: Kizzy's spirited (and often downright naughty) defense of her gypsy ways; the courage of the single woman council member who defends Kizzy and provides a safe haven for her; and the cruelty of Kizzy's schoolmates in the face of Kizzy's "otherness," are all beautifully rendered. It's a wonderful book for learning something about a vanishing culture, but Kizzy's story will resonate with anyone who knows what it feels like to be stranded in a new place, feeling scared, unloved, and unwanted.