The Ten Books you should have read before attending a Classical High School
And why they are on the list! Comfort Food, Issue 3
Dear All and Sundry,
Welcome to another Banquet! This is a follow up comfort food, since a number of you, dear Sundry, asked for the specifics of the top choices posted earlier.
Before we get to it, a brief mea culpa is in order. I regretted to find the post I sent out in my hasty eagerness last week was an unedited version. As my builder uncles always said, ‘Measure twise, er…twice, cut once.’ You can find the updated edited version of the ‘Power, Wisdom or Beauty?’ at the website here.
And while we’re linking, as I said I wanted to revisit the top ten books mentioned in an earlier post here and provide the reasons for my choices. Of course, there are other books besides these ten, but I wanted to pick a group of works that would support each other and still help prepare the student in different ways. Alternative titles are mentioned in many of the explanations below, for those overachievers.
The Ten Books a child should read before attending a Classical High School:
1. Aesop’s Fables: I like the version illustrated by Milo Winter; ages 6-8
The fables teach young minds to associate the delight of story with wisdom. It was the Victorians that pegged didactic morals to the ends of them—the originals are open-ended and allow the reader to deduce a conclusion of their own — many of the fables are instructive in more ways than one, and sometimes the Victorians are a bit too precious in making a fable “moral” instead of a true observation of human tendencies. What’s more, some fables contradict others, proving that the prudential knowledge of when to apply the right moral requires continuing education. It should be noted, Aesop is not presenting a natural history— it will be Aristotle and others who travel that route (see below). Instead, his animal characters are human qualities wearing fur and feathers whose charm lies in presenting these characteristics memorably and at enough of a remove that we recognize ourselves in them obliquely. Redwall and The Wind in the Willows mentioned later will follow suit. The fables prepare the soil of the moral imagination by projecting virtues and vices into memorable and easily recounted scenes.
2. Robin Hood by Howard Pyle; ages 9-12
Though presented more from a political angle in recent tellings, the core of the most iconic stories from the age-old ballads is one of friendship. Robin Hood never meets a stranger but he ends up in a fight. If they prove an enemy, Robin inevitably gets the better of them through a show of wit, good humor, and bravado. But if they prove virtuous, they invariably first knock Robin about the head. That he handles these losses with just as much wit, good humor and bravado wins him as a friend every soul who wends his way through Sherwood worthy of his camaraderie. The Merry Men are merry because they can all share a joke at Robin’s expense, even though they revere him as a leader. Robin loves them, and will do everything in his means, even beyond the bounds of prudence, to help them and guard their higher cause. The medieval milieu, the Marian devotion(!), and the character of the English forest itself, so key to the development of English views of law and liberty (and those of its later colonies), are additional benefits.
3. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain; ages 10-14
If resourcefulness is an American virtue, Twain portrays it in all it facets—we admire Tom’s wit, and envy how reliably he can make lemonade from lemons, even as we realize it is a thin veneer to cover his lack of other traditional American virtues, like piety and pull-yourself-up-from-your-bootstraps hard work. Tom Sawyer speaks to much that is inextricably linked to the American spirit, and its development in history: its hopeful and sometime unwarranted buoyancy in the face of despairing conditions, its magnanimity, its charming brashness, its tendency to get in over its head. But Twain is wise enough to show Tom at times discomfited and can therefore give America its own face to reflect upon - warts and all. Classical schools often skew away from American literature, so having an American focus in 8th grade makes sense in a fill-in-the-corners sort of way. This work is a precursor to an American thread on liberty, justice, grace and conscience that continues through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and passes through the works of Faulkner and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
4. The Arabian Nights trans. by Andrew Lang; ages 9-12
Perhaps the most controversial choice on the list, the Arabian Nights, or The 1,001 Nights, stands as representative for folk stories and fairy tales. Those of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Perrault could fill this spot too, but for the remarkable framing device that sets these apart. Because of it, the Arabian Nights can be considered similar to The Canterbury Tales or Bocaccio’s Decameron, as something more than a simple collection. The tales of Sinbad, (which though not part of the original tales, have been often included with them), have an easily recognizable correlation with The Odyssey, and have a wonderful framing device of their own. Examining (and enjoying) stories in the own right while sifting them for connections prepares the reader for the close and integrated reading that classical schools will demand. Witnessing protagonists from another culture and creed and how similar and dissimilar they are from Western counterparts outweighs the flaw of having to see them through a lens of Victorian exoticism. Also, caveat emptor: Burton’s translation is not to be given to young readers.
5. The Redwall series by Brian Jacques; ages 7-10
More an adventure series than a fantasy, this series of books about medievalesque mice presents an underdeveloped moral universe with few shades of grey, and little by way of metaphysics. They are worth their weight in wildflowers, however, for their wordplay. They delight in song and riddle, they have glorious descriptions of feasts, and there are few books that will so easily expand your child’s vocabulary. Brian Jacques also has a wandering raconteur’s ear for voice and has generously bestowed a commonwealth’s worth of accents on the woodlanders. Few works will inspire young minds in so many directions—your child will want to compose a poem, make a treasure map and start baking after a 30 minute reading session. Fiction should turn us back to the real world, more ready to engage it. This series does that with aplomb. Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series is a more than suitable proxy.
6. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham; ages 6-8
Akin to both its ancestor Aesop’s Fables and the later Redwall books, The Wind in the Willows will allow your young reader to connect the dots and begin seeing literature as a mirror held up to the face of the soul, even when it growls like a badger or sneers like a weasel, or potters around like a Ratty vole. Kenneth Graham is a stylist and reading his prose to your children will put cadences in their heads that they won’t find in your Saturday morning cartoons. Sadly, they won’t find your Saturday morning cartoons anymore either, with all of their attendant laudable and instructive slapstick, but in Toad’s antics, they can still see a fool in his folly, an example of obsession when it’s time to have that difficult iphone conversation. A. A. Milne’s original stories of the hundred-acre wood (not the later Disney offshoots) are also marvelous for their gentle and wise humor and could also occupy this spot.
7. The Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder; ages 8-14
A personal and powerful story brings to life not only the settling of the American Midwest, but also the small ways families throughout history have relied both on themselves and their communities to forge a new life in a new place. The other side of Twain’s coin, the Ingalls are the hardworking, pious, community-building, salt-of-the-Earth that America has continued to call to its shores. They are resourceful and brave but are no simpletons or curmudgeons. It is the rare contemporary reader who does not have a touch of awe at the myriad competencies of Pa and Ma Ingalls—who do more than merely survive in a new land, what with fiddle music, dancing, and story — they thrive, and make a peaceable kingdom by their own hearth, wherever that hearth wanders.
8. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien; ages 8-14
While The Hobbit is often overshadowed by its more ambitious cousin The Lord of the Rings, it is well worth a read on its own merits and is far more accessible to the younger set. Though it possesses echoes of Beowulf, the Volsunga saga, as well as the Odyssey, Bilbo’s adventure is ultimately a rejection of the Germanic and earlier Homeric heroes, nestled as it is in a Christian cosmos, where events are not ruled by the caprice of gods or of fate’s cruel necessity, but by a benign Providence (see Gandalf’s comments on luck). A different cosmos calls for a different hero. Though his Tookish adventurous side has gotten more acclaim, it’s actually his Baggins side that proves decisive for Bilbo in the second half of the book—a patrimony that includes a gathered generational folk wisdom of proverbs, (a Great Conversation, of sorts). The Hobbit remains a delightful exposition of how the common man should value the simple things worth fighting for, the common man himself being not the least of them. Treasure Island may be a reasonable replacement, (and may be a literary antecedent of The Hobbit anyway).
9. Little Women by L. M. Alcott (for Girls); ages 11-14 OR Men of Iron by Howard Pyle (for Boys); ages 11-14
I allowed myself one single-sex bifurcation in this list. Most of the other works are attractive to both boys and girls, but we should also give works that show girls journeying into womanhood and boys into manhood, as signposts for our own young men and women. Little Women presents an admirably complex image of a feminine bildungsroman. Likewise, Men of Iron shows a coming of age for boys where the ideals of youth do not become poisoned by corruption but tempered by resilience into a well-formed character, able to face the tests of adulthood. Each also gives a window into historical periods other than our own, albeit substantially different ones.
10. Black Ships before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff, illus. by Alan Lee; ages 9-12
As an introduction to the myths of the Trojan War, Black Ships before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff does an admirable job of covering not only the events of the Iliad, but the myths that refer to events either side of the wrath of Achilles. Since most classical schools begin with the ancients, freshman year presents the greatest disparity between the skill of the reader and the difficulty of the material, and therefore the greatest despair. The Homeric epics are difficult, and anything the helps freshmen get their bearings in unfamiliar territory should be given to them.
But what about...?
Well, yes, yes, there could be others. Better ones? Perhaps. But it is my list, dear Sundry, my list. Not yours. Don’t get too bent out of shape.