Selected Reading List for Catholic K-12 Schools by Denise Donohue, Ed.D., and Dan Guernsey, Ed.D. Updated February 27, 2019 The following reading list is offered for use with The Cardinal Newman Society’s Literature, Library, and Media Guide for Catholic Educators. The authors assembled this list based on their experience as educators and Catholic school administrators, and by consulting sources including schools recognized by The Cardinal Newman Society’s Catholic Education Honor Roll for their commitment to strong Catholic identity. The list suggests options for Catholic educators, but it is not exhaustive of all possible literature that might be suitable for Catholic education. Many factors must be considered when deciding which particular works should be included in a curriculum. This list may be adopted in whole or in part by educators. All Newman Society resources are available for free online at NewmanSociety.org. K-4 K-4 Fiction- General Adapted Greek and Roman Myths Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes Aesop’s Fables Selected Fairy Tales from Grimm Bible Stories Selected Fairy Tales from Hans Poetry Christian Andersen Folk tales K-4 Titles Adapted Greek and Roman Myths Angus and the Ducks (Flack) Aesop’s Fables Before I Was Me (Fraser) A Book of Nonsense (Lear) Blueberries for Sal (McCloskey) A Pair of Red Clogs (Matsuno) Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You A Seed is Sleeping (Aston) See? (Martin) Alexander & the Terrible, Horrible, No Caps for Sale (Slobodkina) Good, Very Bad Day (Viorst) Charlotte’s Web (White) An Egg is Quiet (Aston) Clown of God (de Paolo) Andy and the Circus (Daugherty) Cranberry Thanksgiving (Devlin) The Cardinal Newman Society Model K-12 Reading List Curious George Series (Rey) Favorite Uncle Remus (Harris) St. George and the Dragon (Hodges) Frog and Toad Series (Lobel) Storm in the Night (Stolz) Harold and the Purple Crayon (Johnson) The Animal Hedge (Fleishman) Heavenly Hosts: Eucharistic Miracles The Blue Fairy Book; The Red Fairy for Kids (Swegart) Book (Lang) If You Give A Mouse A Cookie The Bobbsey Twins (Hope) (Numeroff) The Children’s Book of Virtues Lentil (McCloskey) (Bennett) Madeline (Bemelmans) The Elves and the Shoemaker (Galdone) Make Way for Ducklings (McCloskey) The Five Chinese Brothers (Bishop & Mama, Do you Love Me? (Joosse) Wiese) Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel The Quiltmaker’s Gift (Brumbeau) (Burton) The Little Engine That Could (Piper) Millions of Cats (Gag) The Little Flower: A Parable of Saint Mirette on the High Wire (McCully) Therese of Lisieux (Arganbright & Molly McBride and the Purple Habit Arvidson) (Schoonover – Egolf) The Little House in the Woods (Wilder) Mr. Popper’s Penguins (Atwater) The Moffats (Estes) Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH The Mystery at Midnight (Hendey) Series (O’Brien) The Princess and the Kiss (Bishop) Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters (Steptoe) The Snowy Day (Keats) Nate The Great series (Sharmat) The Story About Ping (Fleck & Wiese) Owl Moon (Yolen) The Story of Ferdinand (Leaf) Papa Piccolo (Talley) The Story of Peter Rabbit (Potter) Peppe the Lamplighter (Barton) The Trumpet of the Swan (White) Peter Pan (Barrie) The Velveteen Rabbit (Williams) Rikki Tikki Tavi (Kipling) The Very Hungary Caterpillar (Carle) Roses in the Snow: A Tale of Saint The Wind in the Willows (Grahame) Elizabeth of Hungary (Jackson & Treasure Box Set (Maryknoll Sisters) Kadar-Kallen) Wee Gillis (Leaf) Saints Chronicles Series (Milgrom & Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak) Davis) Winnie the Pooh (Milne) St. Clare of Assisi Runaway Rich Girl (Hee-ju) Grades 5-8 Grades 5-8 Fiction Titles 7 Riddles to Nowhere (Cattapan) Ablaze: Stories of Daring Teen Saints A Horse and the Boy (Lewis) (Swaim) A Christmas Carol (Dickens) Adam of the Road (Gray) A Story of Joan of Arc (Earnest) Amos Fortune, Free Man (Yates) A Wrinkle in Time (L’Engle) Anne of Geen Gables (Montgomery) 2 The Cardinal Newman Society Model K-12 Reading List Around the World in Eighty Days My Antonia (Cather) (Verne) My Side of the Mountain (George) Beowulf: A New Telling (Nye) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Black Beauty (Sewell) Douglass (Douglass) Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of Old Yeller (Gipson) the Iliad (Lee) Our Town (Wilder) Blessed Marie of New France Outlaws of Ravenhurst (Wallace) (Windeatt) Patron Saint of First Communicants Break in the Basilica (Ahern) (Windeatt) Caddie Woodlawn (Brink) Penrod and others (Tarkington) Captain Courageous (Kipling) Pied Piper of Hamlin (Browning) Cyrano de Bergerac (Rostand) Pygmalion (Shaw) Death Comes for the Archbishop Radiate: More Stories of Daring Teen (Cather) Saints (Swaim) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson) Redwall series (Jacques) Fingal’s Quest (Pollard) Rip Van Winkle (Irving) Freckles (Porter) Robin Hood (Pyle) Hans Brinker (Dodge) Robinson Crusoe (Defoe) Heidi (Spyri) Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry (Taylor) Hero of the Hills (Windeatt) Saint Catherine of Siena (Forbes) Holy Twins: Benedict and Scholastica Saint Dominic (Windeatt) (Norris) Saint Hyacinth of Poland (Windeatt) Homer Price (McCloskey) Saint John Masias (Windeatt) I Am David (Holm) Saint Martin de Porres (Windeatt) I, Juan de Pareja (de Trevino) Saint Monica (Forbes) If All the Swords in England (Willard) Saint Rose of Lima (Windeatt) Johnny Tremain (Forbes) Saint Thomas Aquinas (Windeatt) Journey to the Center of the Earth Sarah Plain and Tall (Wilder) (Verne) Secrets of Siena (Ahern) Kidnapped (Stevenson) Son of Charlemagne (Willard) King Arthur and His Knights of the St. Benedict, Hero of the Hills Round Table (Green) (Windeatt) Kon-Tiki (Heyerdahl) St. Joan, The Girl Soldier (De Wohl) Lay Siege to Heaven (de Wohl) St. Patrick (Tompert) Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Irving) St. Thomas Aquinas for Children Leif the Lucky (D’Aulaire) (Maritain) Lilies of the Field (Barrett) Story of a Bad Boy (Aldrich) Little House in the Big Woods (Wilder) Swallows and Amazons (Ransome) Little Women; Little Men (Alcott) Swiss Family Robinson (Wyss) Log of a Cowboy (Adams) Tales of King Arthur (Talbott) Lost in St. Peter’s Tomb (Ahern) Tanglewood Tales (Hawthorne) Madeline Takes Command (Brill & Tarzan Series (Burroughs) Adams) The Adventures of Robin Hood (Green) Midshipman Easy; Masterman Ready The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Marryat) (Doyle) Misty of Chincoteague (Henry) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain) 3 The Cardinal Newman Society Model K-12 Reading List The Black Arrow (Stephenson) The Secret Garden (Burnett) The Black Cauldron (Alexander) The Song at the Scaffold (Von le Fort) The Blood Red Crescent (Garnett) The Spear: A Novel of the Crucifixion The Boxcar Children (Warner) (De Wohl) The Bronze Bow (Speare) The Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe The Call of the Wild (London) (Walsh) The Children of Fatima (Windeatt) The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow The Children’s Homer (Colum) (French) The Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis) The Swiss Family Robinson (Wyss) The Crucible (Miller) The Tale of Despereaux (DeCamillo) The Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkein) The Trumpeter of Krakow (Kelly) The Hiding Place (ten Bloom) The Twenty-One Balloons (Du Bois) The Hobbit (Tolkien) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader The Hound of the Baskervilles (Doyle) (Lewis) The Innocence of Father Brown [or The Wanderings of Odysseus: The Story others] (Chesterton) of the Odyssey (Lee) The Island of the Blue Dolphins The Weight of the Mass (Nobisso) (O’Dell) The White Stag (Seredy) The Jungle Book (Kipling) The Wind in the Willows (Grahame) The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) The Winged Watchman (van Stockum) The Last Battle (Lewis) The Witch of Blackbird Pond (Speare) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Irving) The Yearling (Rawlings) The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe Thomas Aquinas & the Preaching (Lewis) Beggars (Larnen & Lomask) The Little Flower (Windeatt) Tommy Playfair (Finn) The Living Wood (De Wohl) Treasure Island (Stevenson) The Miracle Worker (Gibson) Trumpeter of Krakow (Kelly) The Miraculous Medal (Windeatt) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the The Phantom Tollbooth (Juster) Sea (Verne) The Pearl (Steinbeck) Two Years Before the Mast (Dana) The Ransom of Red Chief and other Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe) short stories (O. Henry) Westward Ho (Kingsley) The Railway Children (Nesbit) Where the Red Fern Grows (Rawls) The Red Badge of Courage (Crane) White Fang (London) The Red Keep (French) Will Wilder Series (Arroyo) The Restless Flame (de Wohl) Grades 9-12 Grades 9-12 Non-Fiction Titles (original or in translation) Autobiography (Franklin) Funeral Oration (Pericles) Democracy in America, [selections] (de Harvard Address and/or Nobel Prize Tocqueville) acceptance speech (Solzhenitsyn) Forget Not Love: The Passion of I Have a Dream (King) Maximilian Kolbe (Frossad) Night (Wiesel) 4 The Cardinal Newman Society Model K-12 Reading List Poetics, Ethics [excerpts] (Aristotle) The Gulag Archipelago [abridged] Self-Reliance (Emerson) (Solzhenitsyn) The Histories [selections] (Herodotus) Slave Narratives (Douglass, Jacobs) The Magna Carta The Apology, Dialogues, Republic The Prince (Machiavelli) [excerpts] (Plato) The Rights of Man (Paine) The Communist Manifesto (Marx) The Rule of St. Benedict The Declaration of Independence The Social Contract (Rousseau) The Federalist Papers [selections] The United States Constitution (Hamilton, et. al) Treatise on Law and excerpts from other The Gettysburg Address (Lincoln) works (Aquinas) Grades 9-12 Fiction Titles A Man for All Seasons (Bolt) Huckleberry Finn (Twain) A Voyage Round the World (Dampier) Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo) Aeneid [excerpts] (Virgil) Jane Eyre (Bronte) All Quiet on the Western