8 Great Books Told by Child Narrators
From Pip and Holden to Hazel Grace and Pi, stories with child narrators offer a new way to discover reading. These books offer some of the best stories, interesting heroes and heroines, and unique voices in literature. You’d be hard-pressed not to want to spend time with a few of them.
Curious Incident of the Dog in The Nightime
by Mark Haddon
Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. The basis for the hit Broadway show, the improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.
Room
by Emma Donoghue
Adapting a child narrator for the screen could make a screenwriter’s life hell—but the author herself penned the script in this case, so there’s hope that the book’s celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child will have the adaptation it deserves.
Release date: Fall 2015
The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D.Salinger
Since 1951, the story of Holden Caulfield's coming-of-age has rightfully mesmerized generations of readers - 65 million copies have been sold around the world.
The Fault in Our Stars
by John Green
At 16, Hazel Grace Lancaster, a three-year stage IV–cancer survivor, is clinically depressed. To help her deal with this, her doctor sends her to a weekly support group where she meets Augustus Waters, a fellow cancer survivor, and the two fall in love. Whip-smart, unsentimental, funny, charming and compelling you will fall in love with Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters. Just trust us on this. Okay? Okay.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran
Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill a Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior—to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.
Read the full review here.
Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
A ship sinks and sixteen year old Pi finds himself in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days while lost at sea. A mesmerizing tale that keeps you guessing long after you turn the last page
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
"So I called myself, Pip. And came to be called, Pip." The great story of a young orphan, an old spinster, a murderer and thief and the intertwining of their lives for good and ill.