101 Books to Read Before You Grow Up

Schulze, Bianca. 101 Books to Read Before You Grow Up.
October 10th 2016 by Walter Foster Jr
Copy provided by the publisher


In this brightly colored book, heavily illustrated by Shaw Nielsen, 101 classic and newer books are highlighted. Each book has basic information about suggested age range for readers, genre, publisher, publication date and page count, a fun "Did you know" fact about the book or author, a brief description of the plot, as well as some read alike recommendations. At the bottom of the page there is a space for the reader to rate the book and enter some brief notes. 

Any list of "must read" books (including the famous SLJ one) will have some contentious titles, which will differ from reader to reader. This is a solid list, which covers a variety of standard recommended titles, with a few wild cards (the author is Australian) thrown in. 

This would be a perfect gift for the young bookworm in your life, and would also make future gift giving easy if one copied the table of contents and provided the books included for birthdays and holidays. It also is a handy desk reference for teachers who want to have descriptions of books available to share with students. 

My only real objection is that the suggested ages seem more in line with what I would expect of very gifted readers rather than the general population.  Also, it would have been nice to include the original book covers or an interior illustration, but there are no doubt copyright issues with including those.