Paul Dowswell
My top five books for the under 11s
The Compleet Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle’s hilarious and surreal depiction of life in a seedy English prep school of the late 50s, chimed in with my own experience. I read my copies of these books (published now as an anthology) until they fell to pieces. You don’t have to have gone to one of these places to enjoy these. I know American English Majors and 19 year old anarchists who love them.
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Great book. Great film. Learning to read for pleasure is so important to a child’s development. Dahl’s delicious sense of the absurd, and skill in writing for a readership who have only just learned to read on their own, makes this a bookshop perennial.
Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo
I want everyone to remember the horror and sacrifices of the First World War and Morpurgo’s harrowing story, pitched so well for the late primary age group, is still widely read. I’m appalled by Michael Gove’s crude attempts to turn this war into a political issue.
I adore children’s picture books and sharing them with young children is a sure-fire way to develop their interest in reading. Here are two of my favourites:
Dr de Soto by William Stieg
Stieg invented Shrek (although his book is very different from the wonderful film) but this one is his best. Dr de Soto, a mouse dentist, has to decide whether to treat a fox with terrible toothache. Beautifully observed and very funny.
Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper
Exquisitely told and illustrated by Helen Cooper, this tale has a fascinating complexity surprising for its pre-school readership. I taught an adult education course on writing books like this, and one of my students was a philosophy lecturer. She said this book was a brilliant way to start a debate on friendship, sharing, compromise and responsibility.
