Authors offer kids' must-reads for school

LONDON, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- Britain's poet laureate Andrew Motion says children should read "Ulysses" and Homer's "Odyssey" before moving on from grade school.

The Royal Society of Literature asked prominent writers to list their Top 10 books for schoolchildren, the Guardian reported Tuesday.

Also on Motion's list was "Don Quixote," "The Wasteland," "Paradise Lost" and Coleridge and Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads."

"Of course it's a high ambition," he said. "I find it maddening that these books should be dismissed as elitist. That way cultural vandalism lies."

Philip Pullman's list was a little more age appropriate including "Finn Family Moomintroll," "Emil and the Detectives" by Erich Kastner and Norman Lindsay's "The Magic Pudding."

"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling chose "Catch-22," "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Animal Farm," "Wuthering Heights," Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Two Bad Mice," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "David Copperfield" and "Hamlet."