Recommended Reading Lists for Children and Adults

Everyone wants to be a better person, to do the right things. And parents want their children to be better persons, that they choose correctly. 

Given that we only choose what we know, a key way to personal growth is reading the right books. 

Here are some reading lists that can be used by parents who are looking for leisure reading for their children and also by adults who want to be better persons. 

Just click on the links!

For children:

• Kolbe Academy Reading List - from Kindergarten and below to Grade 12 
  
• Heights School Reading List - from Grade 3 to Grade 12 (for boys)
• MercatorNet List - from 2 to 14 years old (please see Our Picks box on the right hand side). The highly recommended books, a sort of "must-reads" are found here. 
• Angelicum Academy's Good Books List - from Nursery to Grade 8 - a list of around 140 culled from John Senior's Life-long Reading List
• Literature Bookshelf for Christian Children by Fr. Gary Coulter
• Spiritual Reading List for Children by Rev. Thomas Morrow, S.Th.D. 

For Junior High to adults:

• Book Lists by Fr. Gary Coulter. Has several categories: intellectual, novels and fiction, apologetics, prayer and spirituality, marriage.  
• A Guide to Spiritual Reading (and more) by Rev Thomas Morrow, S.Th.D. 

For adults (young and old): 

• A Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan by Fr. John McCloskey (for publications before 2004).  Categories included are: literary classics, history and culture, holy men and women, Catholicism explained, spiritual classics, and spiritual reading. 
• Peter Kreeft's Recommended Reading List - a short list of 24 books, two each for categories like autobiography, novels, plays, science fiction, popular philosophy, theology, history, poetry.  
• Life-long Reading List by John Senior, author of The Restoration of Christian Culture. See biography here. 
• 101 Books Millennials Must Read Before They Die and 101 Books Gen Y Must Read Before They Die, by Michael Cook, editor of MercatorNet. The lists have categories such as: allegory, character, comedy and satire, crime, history, imaginative worlds, lives, moral explorations, philosophy and religion, questioning the system, romance, the classical world, war. 
• Some Books Useful for Spiritual Reading by Fr. Fernando Jadraque and Fr. Javier Lopez
• Reading to Pray by Regnum Christi spiritual directors
• Spiritual Classics, a free online compilation of some of the classic spiritual books. Another source of free Catholic books can be found here: Free Traditional Catholic Books. 

If you have other sources of excellent reading lists, kindly email me at raulnidoy@gmail.com or leave a comment here.