Education | ED04 | Summer 2017

Education Magazine
Well Read
Author Alex Preston picks his top five books for pre-teens
istockphoto.com/evgenyatamanenko
A
few weeks ago, one of the teachers at my
son’s school, who also happens to be the
mother of a particularly winning little
9-year-old, asked me to put together a
list of books I’d recommend to boys our
sons’ age. I agreed, thinking it the work of
a few moments to jot down the familiar names, the roll-call
of the pre-teen canon. I soon had several dozen,
either books that had illuminated my childhood
reading life, or books my own son had read and
adored (the cross-over was, as you might imagine,
not inconsiderable). It was only when I came to
whittling down the list that I was struck with
a kind of paralysing doubt, my pen poised but
unable to scratch through any of the names.
It’s partly that I know what it is to write a
novel, the pain and the drudgery, the sense of
laying out the most tender, transparent parts
of yourself to be picked over by the public. Every one of
these books had been the fever-dream of its author, had
been written out at night, or in the early morning, or while
shushing a baby in its pram. Each one had cost something
dear to the person who wrote it (and his or her family), and
because of this every book is precious, even the bad ones.
But none of these were bad, and that was also the problem.
Who was I to choose Swallows and Amazons over Coot
Club? Stalky & Co over Kim? Tom’s Midnight Garden over
“Each of these
books left a huge
mark upon me
and has in turn, I
feel, played a part
in making my son
the boy he is”
Goodnight Mr Tom? (All of these, by the way, were on
the list). I ended up putting the whole lot in a drawer and
writing five names on a piece of paper. These, then, are what
I conveyed to my teacher friend, and it feels like just about
the greatest gift I’ve ever given anyone. Each of these books
left a huge mark upon me and has in turn, I feel, played
a part in making my son the boy he is. Each, crucially, is
the first in a series, and thus the gateway to
several new worlds. Each is both a great story
and beautifully written (something we don’t
always associate with children’s literature).
For each, I was thinking particularly of novels
that would appeal to boys, notoriously more
difficult to persuade into the world of books.
Susan Cooper – Over Sea, Under
Stone. The first in The Dark is Rising
quintet. Cooper’s tale brings Merlin to
life in contemporary Cornwall in a novel both furiously
gripping and wonderfully atmospheric. I read the first
three books in the series to my son and was rather sad
that he wanted to tackle the last two on his own.
Alan Garner – The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. My
favourite book as a child and still a story I’ve been happy to
revisit with each of my children (I’m currently reading it to
my seven-year-old daughter). I gave it to the daughter of
13 wealdentimes.co.uk