Fifty Great Novels for Adults That Adopt a Child’s Point of View
(I’ve arranged these novels chronologically by the characters’ ages, from birth to twelve, pinning each book as best I could (though it involved some guesswork) to the age of the youngest point-of-view character. You’ll find a companion list for characters age 13 to 18 here.)
birth: The Character of Rain by Amélie Nothomb
age 3: The Complete Tales of Ketzia, Merry, and Lucy Gold by Kate Bernheimer
age 4: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
age 5: Arcadia by Lauren Groff
age 5: Lightning Bug by Donald Harington
age 6: A Death in the Family by James Agee
age 6: How I Became a Nun by César Aira
age 6: Such Small Hands by Andrés Barba
age 6: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
age 6: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
age 6: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
age 6: My Home Is Far Away by Dawn Powell
age 7: The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue
age 7: The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce
age 7: Beasts and Children by Amy Parker
age 7: We, the Animals by Justin Torres
age 7: The Lines by Anthony Varallo
age 7: Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos
age 8: Things That Fall from the Sky by Selja Ahava
age 8: The Butterfly Lampshade by Aimee Bender
age 8: The History of Luminous Motion by Scott Bradfield
age 8: They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
age 8: Last Things by Jenny Offill
age 8: The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford
age 8: The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis
age 9: The Wildlands by Abby Geni
age 9: Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
age 10: The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
age 10: Jim the Boy by Tony Earley
age 10: A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
age 10: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
age 10: The Notebook by Ágota Kristóf
age 10: Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
age 10: Vaclav & Lena by Haley Tanner
age 10: The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
age 11: A Field Guide to the Aliens of Star Trek: The Next Generation by Joshua Chapman, Age 11 by Zachary Auburn
age 11: Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard
age 11: How to Behave in a Crowd by Camille Bordas
age 11: The River by Rumer Godden
age 11: Welcome to America by Linda Boström Knausgård
age 11: Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright by Steven Millhauser
age 11: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
age 11: The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne
age 11: Lotería by Mario Alberto Zambrano
age 12: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
age 12: The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry
age 12: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
age 12: Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
age 12: Cargill Falls by William Lychack
age 12: Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice
— September 21, 2020