![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/dreamstime_xl_1221728-1.jpg\")
\u00a9 Robert Adrian Hillman | Dreamstime.com<\/p><\/div> Let’s breathe new life into the “best of the best” lists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe other day,\u00a0I was perusing some\u00a0gift catalogs. One of them featured\u00a0nicely made bookmarks\u00a0boasting\u00a0a list of “books to read before you die.” I love a good list, and I would like to carry\u00a0bookmarks full of fabulous reads to offer my customers, but this particular\u00a0one was\u00a0a catalog of the same old hoary classics that always crop up in conversations about “the canon,” and were all by American and European authors, mostly from the\u00a0prior two centuries.\u00a0Some of the books were fabulous, some seemed like really arbitrary choices, and\u00a0all were by white, mostly male authors, exclusively about white people. (I was particularly amused by the inclusion of Ernest Hemingway’s Men Without Women<\/em>, which did seem to characterize the whole list….)
\n
\nLooking at the books chosen, I felt impatient. It felt like an index of titles mired in peanut butter, stuck. I love literature, and I appreciate fine and nuanced writing\u2014and it\u00a0is found far beyond the narrow scope that has often characterized those “best of” lists. I wanted to come up with a new canon, one that I could feel excited to carry and share with our customers. How could any list of 50 of the greatest books not include Toni Morrison or James Baldwin? And to me, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God<\/em> is a necessity on any must-read list. So I posed the question on Facebook, explaining the context and asking, What’s in YOUR canon?
\nInterestingly,\u00a0one of the first responders\u00a0commented that he’d like to get rid of canons altogether. I understand the impulse; the very idea of a canon is insular and subjective. But I also think that lists of great literature are useful starting points for readers, especially\u00a0for those who may be returning to literature after several years or decades away. They are also fun to create and debate.
\nSo let’s\u00a0create one!
\nOn Facebook, I was focusing on adult titles, but here in ShelfTalker, I’d love to hear about\u00a0your touchstone books for children and teens. Which are the books\u00a0that made you who you are, the ones that moved you and that you think will touch readers’ hearts, souls, and minds far into the next century? Which are\u00a0the timeless\u00a0books that you can go back and back and back to over the years, for truth, for solace, for imagination, for humanity, for joy?
\nI’ll\u00a0be making a bookmark for our store with 50 titles and would love your contributions.\u00a0To start with, my personal canon will\u00a0include Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming <\/em>and\u00a0E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web<\/em>. An Na’s A\u00a0Step from Heaven\u00a0<\/em>is on it, as is Christopher Paul Curtis’s The Watsons Go To Birmingham, 1963<\/em>. I’ll add Edward Eager’s Half Magic<\/em>, and Julie Andrews Edward’s The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles,<\/em> since I read them each about 20 times as a kid. I\u00a0have to choose between Mildred Taylor’s The Land<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry<\/em>,\u00a0for\u00a0the list, and I’ll add Katherine Paterson’s Lyddie<\/em>. John Lewis’s March<\/em> trilogy has to be there, and Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy<\/em>. Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X<\/em> is in the\u00a0canon. I can’t resist Rita Williams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer,<\/em>\u00a0or E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. <\/em>Linda Sue Park’s A Broken Shard\u00a0<\/em>is another timeless beauty, although it’s going to have to duke it out with When My Name Was Keoko<\/em>. (My rule is only one book per author, since it is hard enough to pare down the list to 50.) A Wizard of Earthsea\u00a0<\/em>by Ursula K. LeGuin hops on, as does Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings<\/em> trilogy. Jason Reynold’s Ghost<\/em> will be vying with As Brave As You <\/em>and Long Way Down\u00a0<\/em>for a spot (again, why do I have to choose just one book per author?!), and Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief<\/em> is on\u00a0my list. \u00a0How am I to choose which Karen Hesse to add\u2014Witness<\/em>, Out of the Dust<\/em>, The Music of Dolphins<\/em>? Or which Nancy Farmer\u2014A Girl Named Disaster<\/em>, The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm<\/em>, and House of the Scorpion<\/em> all make fine arguments.\u00a0And which Walter Dean Myers? Monster<\/em>\u00a0may be the obvious choice, but\u00a0I don’t like leaving Bad Boy: A Memoir\u00a0<\/em>behind.\u00a0Ramona the Pest<\/em>\u00a0by Beverly Cleary\u00a0qualifies as a must-read for me, and\u00a0Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain,\u00a0<\/em>Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth,\u00a0<\/em>Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time\u00a0<\/em>all tug at my heart from childhood. Philip Pullman,\u00a0Lloyd Alexander, Diana Wynne-Jones and Octavia Butler (if I can poach her from the adult realm and make a case for YA) would\u00a0make fine fantasy entries.
\nThe more books I list, the harder it is to stop adding. But I will stop for now because I want to hear your titles!
\nWhat is in your canon? What goes on your “50 Books to Read Before You Die” list for children and teens?
\nThanks for your thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"