Best Childrens Classic Books for Christmas Gifts

How many gifts can you give to a child that will be stay with them for the rest of their lives, that they will pass onto their children, that are enjoyable, educational and will feed the imagination and the soul? Wouldn't it be nice if you could join in the fun as well? Reading children's classic books is an ideal way of spending time with your child, and taking a walk down memory lane yourself. This is a personal guide to choosing the best books for children aged 6 months to 12 years based on the books that my son and I have both enjoyed reading the most over the last 11 and a half years. I hope that you will enjoy them too.

This is What Our Family Will be Getting for Christmas! We love gathering the family around the fire and settling down together to a really good film, and so far we've bought every one of J K Rowling 's Harry Potter DVDs at Christmas

Introduce your baby to reading early on. Babies can start to enjoy books at about 6 months, if my memory serves me correctly, and bath books are an ideal way to get them used to the idea of turning pages and looking at pictures. There are so many great bath books to choose from, and many of those are classics, so you can go on to buy paper books of your favourite characters. I've chosen Elmer the elephant as an example, but you'll find plenty of choice out there.

Elmer, I have to admit was my son's choice, but I just love the Little Princess stories, and so did he. You can choose topics that are pertinent to your child's development. We both still have fond memories of the potty training book.

I've just been watching The Little Princess on TV with my 13 year old son! How is that for a classic? Aimed at pre school kids but can continue to please adolescent boys and menapausal mums - this has just got to be worth the money!

Shhh was another first choice for us both. My son chose it initially, but this book instills silence and is a super story to read to a group of kids. Wouldn't you give anything for fifteen minutes of so of PEACE AND QUIET? It has a great ending - I won't spoil it for you. (As an artist, I loved the beautiful illustrations as well.)

The Gruffalo has to be one of the all-time tops. Simple, repetitive, but with a lovely structure and a twist that bright children of three can grasp. Every time I hear the words 'Astounding' or 'Amazing' I think of the Gruffalo.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar, with its distinctive 60's illustrations, is still as popular as ever with children. First published in 1969 and going strong. The fun thing is that you poke your finger through the holes in the pages and they become the caterpillar. You can draw a little face on your finger tip - babies just love it.

Noddy is another TV series that is still running today. Perhaps I need to write another hub about this sub-class of children's stories? Banned from schools and libraries in Britain in the 50's or early 60's because of the limited language and racism, (they don't care about rampant sexism even today!), Enid Blyton's Noddy is enjoying a revival today.

The Bear Hunt is one of the best ever books, (in my limited experience) for reading aloud. Onomatopoeic and rhythmical it has the same up and then back down again structure as The Gruffalo, it gains momentum, is exciting and again, has a great ending. Whenever we hear 'What a Beautiful Day', my son and I continue with lines from The Bear Hunt. We gave it away and now we want it back again! Never give away your childrens' books, they will never grow out of the best ones.

(As I write this the list gets longer and longer. I remember more great books)

The Time it Took Tom, (a parent's nightmare), is a more modern book with great illustrations, an up and back again structure with a twist at the end. Your child will also learn lots about telling the time. Great fun.

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is another timeless classic. As a child I loved Dr Seuss. I used to read the Cat in the Hat but came to The Grinch as a mother. An ideal Christmas book, great to read aloud, funny and with a fabulous, anti-materialist moral. Of course the children will ignore the moralizing and delight in the story and pictures.

The Tiger Who Came for Tea was not one of my childhood books but was bought for my son by an elderly friend. Like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the illustrations are very 60's, the story simple and just delightful. Another must-have book.

Finally, Whinnie the Pooh. Yet another great classic that I missed out on as a child, and didn't get around to reading with my son until he was about ten! We both loved it. Charming, lovely pictures and unforgettable characters.

How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen. A lesser-known book, but if you are driven mad by your child's constant fiddling, this will keep you sane a little longer, and your child will love it too.

Finally, The Owl Babies, another super book for pre-school children.

This list is from memory and, as we love all these books and still look at them together, they are not all in the correct age-group section. This list is also shorter than it should be due to the eruption of the Harry Potter books which we were reading throughout this period. I haven't included them in my list because, lets face it, you don't need to turn to an article like this to think of buying them. It was taking us a year to read the second and third volumes at the rate of three or four pages a night, so other books had to be squeezed in between.

I must admit, I didn't really take to the My Naughty Little Sister stories, but my son just loved them and even borrowed the story on CD just a couple of years ago, (aged 10) and enjoyed listening to them all over again. I reiterate, children never grow out of childrens' classics!

Where the Wild Thing Are Again a book suitable for much younger children, but I read this to my son much later on and he still enjoyed it and I found the play on words of time charming and the fact that the monsters were the author's Aunts and Uncles was most amusing. I missed all this the first time around.

The Selfish Giant can be read as a story for children and adults. Beautifully written, as anyone would expect when the author is Oscar Wild. The only downside is that I was always so choked with tears, that my son always had to finish the book off. If you like a good weepy, go for this.

The Wind in the Willows continues to be a delight. Made into a ballet, countless films and reprinted time and time again. These little animals living by the riverside have great personalities and great adventures.

Since before my son was born, the children's classics market has been dominated by J K Rowling and Harry Potter. It's easy to leave other books out! It wasn't long before it was taking me most of a year to read the lastest Harry Potter to my child, three pages a night when he went to bed, so in the end I had to leave them for when he was old enough to read them for himself - and he did that soon enough. Needless to say, I raced ahead and finished off the series myself, and jolly good they were too!. Rowling has carefully crafted the books to appeal to adults as well as children, and these books will broaden your children's vocabulary as well as feed their imagination.

Don't forget all those other classics!

This section is the longest partly because it's these are the ones I've been reading to my son most recently and so I can remember them the best!

Danny the Champion of the World and The Witches are my two Roald Dahl choices, but we also enjoyed Matilda greatly (also excellent film), and I quite liked Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I hated Charlie and the Glass Elevator but was forced to complete it by my son. Danny will initiate your child into the world of crime (albeit justified) - a blow by blow account of the arts of poaching. Be warned.

Stig of the Dump, Worzel Gummidge and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are are books that my father bought me nearly 50 years ago. The language is a bit stilted for now, but my son took a delight in that. The stories still hold children enthralled today.

Alice in Wonderland, and Alice Through the Looking Glass are books for all ages. Not so easy to read aloud, I am reading them to my son now, and I think that is about the right time. I don't like abridged books, I think they spoil the story and I'd rather wait until the right time to read the real thing. I have chosen this copy from Amazon because of the notes, and the original illustrations by John Tenniel. Tenniel's illustrations are now part of that body of knowledge that all children should have, they are such classics, and the annotations are important because Lewis Carrol was a mathematician, and there are lots of hidden puzzles in the books. You can read and appreciate all this now, your child will grow into the books later on, and pass them down to their children.

The Borrowers. Well, how else can you explain all that stuff that goes missing?

I know I was. This list doesn't even include all the great books that we've read in French since coming to live in Limousin - a great place for stories about Wolves and Witches. I hope that if you were struggling for book ideas for gifts, or books for Chirstmas, that this list has inspired you and that both you and your children (and childrens' children) will enjoy reading them as much as we have.

How about books to read at Halloween? Best Halloween Stories for Kids

Post Script

My son, husband and I are now living in France and running painting holidays, a Bed and Breakfast and self-catering holiday cottage in beautiful, rural France. Perfect for family holdiays. For more information see our web site, below or feel free to e-mail or telephone us: info@lestroischenes.com, +44 (0)5 55 48 29 84

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Already I am thinking of all those fabulous childrens' favourites that I've left out, Treasure Island, Peter Pan ....

Feel free to add your favourites in the comments box below.

These are the books that readers have suggested, with one or two of mine added as I've thought of them:

Here are the first two recommendations from INFJay: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein

Of course, The Hobbit. My father gave me a copy of this when I was young. A little difficult to read out loud but a fabulous story and a real classic. Who doesn't know exactly what a Hobbit is?

2patricias reccommends Bye Bye Baby.

jodohuer suggested Boxcar Children, My Side of the Mountain, Two Little Savages (which has been recently republished by Axios Press, www.axiospress.com, with all the original illustrations!) and Where the Red Fern Grows