West London Free School publishes reading list

I'm delighted that the West London Free School it has received 445 applications for its 120 places that will be available in September.

It's founder Toby Young says:

"Initial indications are that our applications are coming from all parts of the local community, including many from local estates and from a large range of ethnic backgrounds. The claim that the academically rigorous, classical education we're offering will only appeal to white, middle class families is not only patronising, it has been disproved by the hard evidence of the applications we have been getting."

The Labour MP for Hammersmith, Andrew Slaughter claimed the school would be "unwanted." We await his apology with baited breath.

After a year at a temporary site, from next year it is due to be in Palingswick House. This is a fine building in Ravenscourt Park Ward, which is the ward I represent on Hammersmith and Fulham Council.  I am thrilled that so many of the parents I represent will have this new choice.

For those starting this year, the 11-12 year olds, Toby has drawn up the following provisional reading list.

What do you think?

Adams, Richard – Watership Down

Ahlberg, Allan – My Brother’s Ghost

Aiken, Joan – The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

Alcott, Louise May – Little Women, Little Men

Alexander, Lloyd – The Chronicles of Prydain

Almond, David – Skellig

Ashley, Bernard – Ronnie’s War

Barrie, J.M. – Peter Pan

Bawden, Nina – Carrie’s War

Berry, James – A Thief in the Village

Blackman, Malorie – Cloud Busting

Buchan, John – The Thirty-Nine Steps

Burnet, Francis Hodgson ­– The Secret Garden

Byars, Betsy – The Midnight Fox

Cooper, James Fenimore – The Last of the Mohicans

Cross, Gillian – The Great Elephant Chase

Crossley-Holland, Kevin – The Seeing Stone

Defoe, Daniel – Robinson Crusoe

Dickinson, Peter – The Ropemaker

Doherty, Berlie – Street Child

Doyle, Arthur Conan– The Sherlock Holmes Series, The Lost World

Durrell, Gerald – My Family and Other Animals

Enright, Elizabeth – The Saturdays

Fine, Anne – Flour Babies

Forester, C.S. – The Horatio Hornblower Series, The African Queen

Frank, Anne – Diary of a Young Girl

Gaiman, Neil – Coraline

Garfield, Leon – Jack Holborn

Gavin, Jamila – The Surya Trilogy

Haggard, Rider H. – King Solomon’s Mines

Lee Harper – To Kill A Mockingbird

Higson, Charlie – Young Bond: Silverfin: a James Bond Adventure

Hobab, Russell – The Mouse and His Child

Hugo, Victor – The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Ibbotson, Eva – Journey to the River Sea

Jones, Diana Wynne – The Homeward Bounders

Juster, Norton – The Phantom Tollbooth

Kastner, Erich – Emil and the Detectives

Kipling, Rudyard – Kim, The Jungle Book

Laird, Elizabeth – The Garbage King

L’Engle, Madeleine – A Wrinkle in Time

Le Guin, Ursula – A Wizard of Earthsea

Lindsay, Norman – The Magic Pudding

Lively, Penelope – The Ghost of Thomas Kempe

Lewis, C.S. – The Chronicles of Narnia

London, Jack – The Call of the Wild

Mahy, Margaret – Madigan’s Fantasia

Mark, Jan – Voyager

McCaughrean, Geraldine – Stop the Train!

Morpurgo, Michael – Kensuke’s Kingdom

Naidoo, Beverley – Journey to Jo’burg (With an  introduction by Michael Rosen)

Nesbit, E. – The Railway Children, Five Children and It

Pullman, Philip – His Dark Materials

Ransome, Arthur – Swallows and Amazons

Reeves, Philip – Mortal Engines

Scott, Sir Walter – Ivanhoe

Sedgewick, Marcus – My Swordhand is Singing

Shelley, Mary – Frankenstein

Stevenson, Robert Louis – Treasure Island

Sutcliff, Rosemary – The Eagle of the Ninth

Twain, Mark – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Tolkien, J.R.R. – The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings

Verne, Jules – Around the World in Eighty Days, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, A Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Westall, Robert – The Machine Gunners

Wells, H.G. – The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds

Wren, P.S. – Beau Geste

Wyndham, John – The Midwich Cuckoos, The Day of the Triffids

Poetry Anthologies

Heaney, Seamus and Hughes, Ted (Eds) – The Rattle Bag

Heaney, Seamus and Hughes, Ted (Eds) – The School Bag

Sweeney, Matthew (Ed) – The New Faber Book of Children’s Verse New

Duffy, Carol Ann – New and Collected Poems for Children