Fantasy Reads: Children

Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Retells, in simple text, the tale of a girl who falls down a rabbit hole into a place filled with extraordinary creatures and amazing things.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

Four English schoolchildren find their way through the back of a wardrobe into the magic land of Narnia and assist Aslan, the golden lion, to triumph over the White Witch, who has cursed the land with eternal winter.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North. In this first book of a fantasy trilogy, young Lyre & her alter ego, a protective animal named Pantalaimon, escape from the child-stealing Gobblers & join a group heading north to rescue a band of missing children. In a landmark epic of fantasy and storytelling, Philip Pullman invites readers into a world as convincing and thoroughly realized as Narnia, Earthsea, or Redwall. Here lives an orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars at Oxford's Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors. First, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with evidence of mystery and danger in the far North, including photographs of a mysterious celestial phenomenon called Dust and the dim outline of a city suspended in the Aurora Borealis that he suspects is part of an alternate universe. He leaves Lyra in the care of Mrs. Coulter, an enigmatic scholar and explorer who offers to give Lyra the attention her uncle has long refused her. In this multilayered narrative, however, nothing is as it seems. Lyra sets out for the top of the world in search of her kidnapped playmate, Roger, bearing a rare truth-telling instrument, the compass of the title. All around her children are disappearing-victims of so-called "Gobblers" and being used as subjects in terrible experiments that separate humans from their daemons, creatures that reflect each person's inner being. And somehow, both Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are involved.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan

After learning that he is the son of a mortal woman and Poseidon, god of the sea, twelve-year-old Percy is sent to a summer camp for demigods like himself, and joins his new friends on a quest to prevent a war between the gods.

Eragon by Christopher Paolini

In Alagaesia, a fifteen-year-old boy of unknown lineage called Eragon finds a mysterious stone that weaves his life into an intricate tapestry of destiny, magic, and power, peopled with dragons, elves, and monsters.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling

When the Chamber of Secrets is opened again at the Hogswart School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, second-year student Harry Potter finds himself in danger from a dark power that has once more been released on the school.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

Each of five children lucky enough to discover an entry ticket into Mr. Willy Wonka's mysterious chocolate factory takes advantage of the situation in his own way.

The Isle of the Lost by Melissa de la Cruz

Imprisoned on the Isle of the Lost, the teenaged children of Disney's most evil villains search for a dragon's eye--the key to true darkness and the villains' only hope of escape.

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

Max sails to the land of the wild things, where he becomes their king.