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Matilda Wormwood.

Matilda · 1988

Four years old. Library card. Walking home with a stack taller than she is. Matilda’s reading list is the patron-saint canon for every kid who hides under the covers with a flashlight.

"The books transported her into new worlds."

3 booksCurated · cited · cross-referenced

The shelf, decoded

Why this list.

Matilda’s reading list is named, in chapter one, by Roald Dahl himself. The list below is the actual books she walks home with from the public library.

The reading list

3 books for Matilda.

No. 01On screen
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Named in chapter two of Matilda. She is four years old.
CitationNovel, Chapter 2
No. 02On screen
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
Also named in chapter two. Matilda finishes it in a weekend.
CitationNovel, Chapter 2
No. 03On screen
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway
The Hemingway pick from the same chapter. Mrs. Phelps is impressed.
CitationNovel, Chapter 2

Closing note

Read by torch. Under a duvet. With a chocolate cake.

Hermione Granger

Cover of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Cover of A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The most famous reader in modern fiction. Hermione’s shelves are half library reference, half novels she has memorized but will never admit are favorites.

Read the list

Beauty and the BeastSoon

Belle

Cover of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green

Cover of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Cover of The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm

The provincial girl with a borrowed library and a bigger imagination. Belle’s reading list runs from fairy tales to Greek myth — and the one book she keeps re-reading.

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