In this final look at the Booktrust’s list of 100 books children should read before they turn 14 the books are aimed at 12 – 14 year olds, the cut off point imposed by Booktrust as “beyond that, children tend to progress to more adult literature”. I may come back to this idea in a later post, but for now will concentrate on the list.

This is the full list, with the books I’ve read made bold.

– Watership Down by Richard Adams
– Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman
– Forever by Judy Blume
– The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
– Junk by Melvin Burgess
– Looking for JJ by Anne Cassidy
– The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
– The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
– Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner
– The Owl Service by Alan Garner
– Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin
– The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
– Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz
– The Kite Rider by Geraldine McCaughrean
– The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
– Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet
– Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
– The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman
– Witch Child by Celia Rees
– Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
– Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
– How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
– Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick
– I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
– The Fellowship of the Ring by J R R Tolkien

For this final list I have read 17 out of the 25, similarly to yesterday’s 9-11 years list there are 4 books that have been on my need to read list for some time. There are a couple of books I’ve never heard of, ones I must definitely investigate.

It’s interesting that in comparison to the three other sections of the list this is the one with more modern and recent releases than the other lists. There are only a small handful of books that were already relatively old when I was a child, compared with much bigger portions of previous lists. I read some of the books on this list when I was in the target demographic but have read far more of them since, some due to their publication dates and some because they just weren’t in my awareness.

Like all of the lists there are books I’m surprised to see, and books I’m surprised not to see. I think this is the list I am probably most curious to see the voting results for, once the public have chosen a favourite. I think it’s probably the hardest to predict out of all four lists.