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Literature Lists for Pre-College Philosophy
Note: All of the picture books and most of the chapter books can be used to inspire philosophy discussions with a wide variety of age groups.
Picture Books
The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau, by Jon Agee
The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown
The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown
My Friend the Monster by Clyde Roberta Bulla
Thinking Stories by Philip Cam
Hello, Red Fox by Eric Carle
Emily's Art by Peter Catalanotto
The Christmas Menorahs: How A Town Fought Hate, by Janice Cohn
The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, by Mem Fox
Really Really Big Questions by Stephen Law
Stormy Night by Michéle Lemieux
A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni
Frederick by Leo Lionni
Matthew's Dream, by Leo Lionni
Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel
Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel
Owl at Home, by Arnold Lobel
The Great Blueness and Other Predicaments by Arnold Lobel
The Mountain That Loved a Bird, by Alice McLerran
The Big Box by Toni Morrison
The Three Questions by Jon J. Muth
The Upside-Down Cat, by Elizabeth Parsons
The Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter
Hildilid's Night, by Cheli Duran Ryan
The Amazing Bone, by William Steig
Brave Irene, by William Steig
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, by William Steig
Yellow and Pink by William Steig
The Bear That Wasn't, by Frank Tashlin
The Sky Jumps into Your Shoes at Night, by Jasper Tomkins
Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems
Albert's Toothache, by Barbara Williams
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
Morris the Moose, by B. Wiseman
I Know a Lady, by Charlotte Zolotow
Chapter Books for Young Readers
The Lemming Condition, by Alan Arkin
Knee-Knock Rise, by Natalie Babbitt
Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt
The Wizard of Oz, by Frank Baum
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll
Behind the Attic Wall, by Sylvia Cassedy
Danny, The Champion of the World, by Ronald Dahl
James and the Giant Peach, by Ronald Dahl
Clark
Grendel, by John Gardner
In the Suicide Mountain, by John Gardner
The Chinese Mirror, by Mirra Ginsburg (trans.)
The Poet-Bat, by Randell Jarrell
The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Kosigsburg
Lesse Webster, by Ursula LeGuin
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L'Engle
Perelandra, by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
The Dragon with the Red Eyes, by Astrid Lindgren
Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, by Betty Bao Lord
Raging Robots and Unruly Uncles, by Margaret Mahy
The World of Pooh, by A.A. Milne
Five Children and It, by E. Nesbit
The Story of the Amulet, by E. Nesbit
Secret of the Andes, by Ann Nolen
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, by Robert C. O'Brien
Tom's Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce
A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck
The Bears' House, by Marilyn Sachs
Fran Ellen's House, by Marilyn Sachs
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Old Ramon, by Jack Shaefer
Abel's Island, by William Steig
The Real Thief, by William Steig
Many Moons, by James Thurber
A Traveler in Time, by Alison Uttley
Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White
Stuart Little, by E.B. White
The Sword in the Stone, by T.H. White
Middle and High School Literature
The Universe and Dr. Einstein, by Lincoln Barnett
Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, by George Berkeley
Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, by Sissela Bok
The Stranger, by Albert Camus
Mrs. Bridge, by Evan Connell
Meditations on First Philosophy, by Descartes
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
Middlemarch, by George Eliot
The Campaign, by Carlos Fuentes
The Mind's I, composed and arranged by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder
In A Different Voice, by Carol Gilligan
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
"A White Heron," in The Country of the Painted Firs and Other Stories, by Sarah Orne Jewett
The Trial, by Franz Kafka
Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, by Soren Kierkegaard
Philosophical Fragments, by Soren Kierkegaard
A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold
The Time of the Hero, by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, by Milan Kundera
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Tar Baby, by Toni Morrison
What Does It All Mean?, by Thomas Nagel
The Examined Life, by Robert Nozick
Tell Me A Riddle, by Tillie Olsen
A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, by John Perry
The World of Silence, by Max Picard
The Republic, by Plato
A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Nausea, by John-Paul Sartre
No Exit, by Jean-Paul Sartre
Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
A Young Person's Guide to Philosophy, edited by Jeremy Weate
Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf