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Classic Summer Reading Books for Kids and Teens

26 May

The most wonderful season for parents, children and teenagers has finally arrived! Summer holidays are a time for well-deserved rest, leisure time activities, fun and unforgettable impressions. Summer will fly by quickly, and you must rise to the challenge of realizing everything that you have planned.

Today's children live in a time of discovery and rapid technological development, among a plethora of film-stories and video games packed with realistic special effects. Unfortunately, what they often are missing is the knowledge and confidence that can be gleaned from books.

Most adults can recall from their childhood memories the genuine pleasure that they took in reading some interesting, exciting work of literature. The memories that you cherish should naturally lead you to wish to introduce your children to the world of classical literature. After all, every book that has been read shapes children's mores, values, world outlook, and beliefs that will influence them at all levels in their future adult lives.

Today we have prepared for you a selection of wonderful summer adventures that you may wish to read (to re-visit your youth), or give your children to read during the summer holidays.


  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, is a novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, inspired by a port town in the U.S. state of Missouri where Twain lived. During these adventures, Tom manages to find his love (Becky Thatcher), to witness a murder and expose the murderer, to run away from home, to become a pirate and live on the island, to get lost in the cave and safely get out of it, to find a precious treasure worth twelve thousand dollars, and share it with his friend Huckleberry Finn.

http://leopoldclassiclibrary.com/book/the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer-57c67229c0edf
  • The Jungle Book

“The Jungle Book" is a collection of instructive stories by Rudyard Kipling, written for his daughter Josephine. The book consists of two parts, where the main hero of the stories is a two-year-old boy, lost in the Jungle. By a quirk of fate, the child finds himself in a family of wolves that protects him from Shere-Khan — a tiger who hunts the man's cub. At the Pack Council the animals decide to allow "Mowgli, the Frog," as they call him, to live among the wolves.

The Jungle Book: http://leopoldclassiclibrary.com/book/the-jungle-book-57c6134dac11e
The Second Jungle Book: http://leopoldclassiclibrary.com/book/the-second-jungle-book-57c66fefc3718


  • Hans Brinker; Or, The Silver Skates

This is a beautiful children's novel by American writer Mary Mapes Dodge. The book tells us a story about the children of a poor family: the boy Hans; and his younger sister Gretel. The children want to win the ice-skating race on the canal in order to win the silver skates, and so begins a wonderful story about honor, and the results of making noble decisions, despite poverty.

http://leopoldclassiclibrary.com/book/hans-brinker-or-the-silver-skates-a-story-of-life-in-holland


  • The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire

This is a novel by the American illustrator and writer Howard Pyle, who describes the adventures of Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men. They do not want to serve the cruel and greedy sheriff and decide to restore justice in their own way. This "people's justice band" takes money from the rich and gives it to those who are in need. Robin Hood releases innocent prisoners and helps noble knights to fight servants of the authorities. They call him a criminal and a thief, but in a world where the law stands on the side of evil, his arrows point to hope for a better life.

http://leopoldclassiclibrary.com/book/the-merry-adventures-of-robin-hood-of-great-renown-in-nottinghamshire


  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

This is a great choice for your older teens. A classic science fiction novel by Jules Verne, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" tells the story of the French naturalist, Dr. Aronnax, who embarks on an expedition to rid the sea of a monster, only to discover that it is actually the Nautilus, a giant submarine built by the mysterious Captain Nemo. Together, Nemo and Aronnax embark on a truly incredible voyage, from the lost city of Atlantis to the South Pole.

http://leopoldclassiclibrary.com/book/twenty-thousand-leagues-under-the-sea


  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Our next book is the famous fairy tale, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", written by American author of classic children's literature, Lyman Frank Baum. The book, published at the beginning of the last century, is still very popular among children today. Children have always been interested in books that are full of amazing and incredible events, good and evil wizards, talking animals and fantastic creatures.

Tales about the Wonderful Wizard and the Land of Oz, which have been repeatedly reprinted in dozens of languages, emphasize such virtues as practicality, independence, tolerance, and egalitarianism.

http://leopoldclassiclibrary.com/book/the-wonderful-wizard-of-oz
  • The Adventures of Maya the Bee

A young bee named Maya, despite all the warnings, is filled with the desire to explore a huge world outside the hive, full of magic, fun and miracles. This desire pushes her to commit an unforgivable crime for bees — to run away from the hive. During her adventures, Maya makes friends with insects and, together with them, faces various dangers. As a result, Maya is captured by hornets, the archenemies of bees. Nevertheless, Maya escapes from imprisonment and discovers that the hornets are planning a large-scale military operation — an attack on her native hive. The small bee is faced with a choice: go back to the hive, warn of the imminent invasion, and be punished for leaving; or save herself without returning to the hive, which in this case might be destroyed.

http://leopoldclassiclibrary.com/book/the-adventures-of-maya-the-bee

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