Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) New Directions, 1946 My friend Margaret put me onto Nathanael West, which is ironic because it was by virtue of her not having recognized his name in a discussion of literary masterpieces; she was relieved that I hadn't heard of him either. Ignorance loves company, even
Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking (1945) Trans. Florence Lamborn Illus. Louis S. Glanzman NY: Viking Press, 1950 My copy of Pippi Longstocking is a bookclub edition, one of several that my mother ordered for me when I was a girl. What sets Pippi (and Rudyard Kipling's Kim) apart in this series, however, is the
Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days (1873) Illus. Jame's Prunier Trans. Barbara Brister "The Whole Story" Viking, 1996 I discovered "The Whole Story" editions one Saturday afternoon browsing in the Children's Library. They're lavishly illustrated: think, annotations in photographs. (Unfortunately I couldn't find the corresponding cover image that
William Golding's The Lord of the Flies (1954) This was the last of my four reads for Dewey's Read-a-Thon, so if you are one of the many people who complain about having had to read The Lord of the Flies in school, just imagine reading it for the first time in
Juan Ramón Jiménez's Platero and I (1914) Trans. Eloïse Roach University of Texas Press, 1957 When I saw that Platero and I was listed in both 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up and 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, I thought I must really have been missing something
