Pues resulta que a los ingleses les ha dado por pedirle a una serie de escritores destacados que elijan una serie de lecturas para niños en edad escolar. Hay de todo, pero sin duda destaca la lista del amigo Andrew Motion, poeta laureado. A continuación copio y pego unas perlas del amigo Motion y las selecciones de los escritores consultados:
"Of course it's a high ambition," he said. "But I see no intrinsic reason why children shouldn't read these works. They are wonderful, profoundly democratic works of art, but because some of them have a reputation as difficult they are put in a box and called elitist. The minute you do that, the backbone of culture is removed. We admit there is a problem at the moment with knowledge and I feel absolutely no embarrassment about naming these as sine qua nons. I find it maddening that these books should be dismissed as elitist. That way cultural vandalism lies."
"Of course it's a high ambition," he said. "But I see no intrinsic reason why children shouldn't read these works. They are wonderful, profoundly democratic works of art, but because some of them have a reputation as difficult they are put in a box and called elitist. The minute you do that, the backbone of culture is removed. We admit there is a problem at the moment with knowledge and I feel absolutely no embarrassment about naming these as sine qua nons. I find it maddening that these books should be dismissed as elitist. That way cultural vandalism lies."
JK Rowling
Author of the Harry Potter series
Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
David Copperfield Charles Dickens
Hamlet William Shakespeare
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
Animal Farm George Orwell
The Tale of Two Bad Mice Beatrix Potter
The Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger
Catch-22 Joseph Heller
Philip Pullman
Author of the His Dark Materials trilogy
Finn Family Moomintroll Tove Jansson
Emil and the Detectives Erich Kästner
The Magic Pudding Norman Lindsay
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak
The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens (or other good anonymous ballads)
First Book of Samuel, Chapter 17 (the story of David and Goliath)
Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare
A good collection of myths and legends
A good collection of fairytales
Andrew Motion
Poet laureate
The Odyssey by Homer
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Hamlet by Shakespeare
Paradise Lost by Milton
Lyrical Ballads by Coleridge and Wordsworth
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Waste Land by TS Eliot
Por último y como comentario personal, tan sólo añadir que sí, que en un mundo ideal la lista de Motion estaría muy bien, pero que a efectos prácticos, no sé yo.... Yo con los Tres Mosqueteros era muy feliz.
Ah, y el enlace de la página del Guardian de donde he cogido la noticia:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/childrenslibrary/story/0,,1698794,00.html?gusrc=rss