This list is not a list of books required to start a lending library or books that must be in every library, but if you want to start collecting, these are 101 books that are good, true, beautiful, and in demand. Most of these books are not prohibitively expensive to purchase or hard to find, but they are good classic literature that others will appreciate being able to find and borrow in one place.
You also don’t have to start out with the best available edition of each of these books. Find an unabridged and well-written edition, paperback or hardcover, at a thrift store or online and add it to your library. Read it if you haven’t already, and decide if you want to be on the lookout for a better edition with more lovely illustrations or if the book you have will do. Don’t obsess over acquiring all of these books before you start lending or even acquiring all of them ever. Maybe all or most of these books are still available at your local public library, and you want to concentrate on collecting books that are not so readily available. This list is just for reference and help as you begin to build the library that God is leading you to build and share.
- A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond
- A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor (series)
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
- Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
- At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald
- B Is for Betsy by Carolyn Haywood (series)
- Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild (series)
- Bambi by Felix Salten
- Betsy Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace (series)
- Big Red by Jim Kjelgaard
- Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
- Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar d’Aulaire
- Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
- Call of the Wild by Jack London
- Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
- Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
- Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit
- Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney (series)
- Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel (series)
- Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift.
- Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge
- Heidi by Johanna Spyri
- Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
- James Herriot’s Treasury for Children
- Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
- Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
- Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
- King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry
- Lassie Come Home by Eric Knight
- Little Britches, or Father and I Were Ranchers by Ralph Moody (series)
- Little Eddie by Carolyn Haywood (series)
- Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House series)
- Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- Many Moons by James Thurber
- Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
- Men of Iron by Howard Pyle
- Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry
- My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
- My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
- Norse Gods and Giants by Ingri and Edgar D’Aulaire
- Old Yeller by Fred Gipson
- Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle
- Peter Pan by James Barrie
- Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (either a children’s version such as Dangerous Journey or the full version or both)
- Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
- Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter
- Rip van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- Sarah Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
- Some version of Aesop’s Fables. Some version of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (Howard Pyle version recommended)
- Some version of tales from Chaucer (A Taste of Chaucer by Anne Malcolmson recommended)
- Some version of the Arabian Nights, or 1001 Nights. Some version of the Robin Hood stories (Howard Pyle version recommended)
- Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome (series)
- Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb
- Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
- The Black Stallion by Walter Farley (series)
- The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (series)
- The Borrowers by Mary Norton (series)
- The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner (original series of 19 books recommended)
- The Children’s Homer by Padraic Colum
- The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (or some collection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales)
- The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden
- The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli
- The Good Master by Kate Seredy
- The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
- The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford
- The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (Narnia series)
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery
- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
- The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
- Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss
- The Treasure Seekers by Edith Nesbit
- Uncle Remus (Brer Rabbit) stories by Joel Chandler Harris
- The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
- The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (series)
- The Yearling by Marjorie Rawlings
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Treasury of Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
- Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
- Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong
- Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
- Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne
Various titles on this list are suitable for different ages and maturity levels, but all of them can be enjoyed by adults and by children or young adults and follow C.S. Lewis’s dictum: “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”
Reading and collecting each of these books will lead you to other living books by the same author or in the same series. Some of these books may not be your cup of tea. If not, give them away to someone who does want them. And enjoy building your own unique family or lending library, one book at a time.
This post is part of our Ask The Librarian series, a Card Catalog Project. You can find more like this here. And, we would love to connect with you! You can find us on Facebook here.