2024 reading challenge: the Puffin classics

Happy New Year! This January, I’ve decided to set my own 2024 reading challenge – for myself but anyone else is more than welcome to join in too! It’s perhaps a little lacking in structure as I find if these kinds of things are really rigid or rule heavy, I just won’t do them.

So, my 2024 reading challenge: the Puffin classics came about because, in an attempt to keep my sons interested in reading, I gifted them this lovely box set for Christmas:

What I realised when looking through them is that I actually haven’t read a lot of them myself. Do I know the stories of most of them? Yes – but I think that is more from TV or film versions. So, my aim this year is to read one of these a month and by the end of 2024, have very much enriched myself in the world of classic children’s fiction. If my boys let me read them to them, all the better – but we’ll see on that one!

The Puffin Classics

As Puffin is the children’s imprint of Penguin books, it has some absolute classics in its catalogue – you can find the complete list here.

This particular box set I have features ten children’s stories by renowned authors and are the ones I’ll be focusing on in my challenge. And here they are:

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Extraordinary Cases of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Railway Children by Edith Nesbitt
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

I’m going to work my way through the list, alphabetically by author, I think, and see how I get on. That means first up – Peter Pan! I’ve seen the 1991 classic film Hook! but appreciate that isn’t the Peter Pan story, so am excited to get reading! Look out for my review later this month.

Are you doing any reading challenges in 2024? Let me know what they are!