Ailing Christopher Hitchens Creates a List of Essential Books for an 8‑Year-Old Girl to Read

In the last months of his life, a phys­i­cal­ly weak­ened Christo­pher Hitchens trav­eled to the Texas Freethought Con­ven­tion to accept the Richard Dawkins Award. While there, an eight-year-old girl, Mason Crumpack­er of Dal­las, asked Hitchens what books she should con­sid­er read­ing. Intrigued, Hitchens spent 15 min­utes chat­ting with the young­ster and sketch­ing out a read­ing list. And, accord­ing to the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle, it looks some­thing like this:

• Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths (even though it turns out the girl was already a big fan of I, Claudius).
• Richard Dawkins’ illus­trat­ed sci­ence book, The Mag­ic of Real­i­ty.
• Any satir­i­cal works by Shake­speare and Chaucer. Find some in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.
• Ayaan Hir­si Ali’s Nomad: From Islam to Amer­i­ca: A Per­son­al Jour­ney Through the Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions (to explain what it could be like for young women to grow up in this world.)
• A Tale of Two Cities in par­tic­u­lar, and any Dick­ens in gen­er­al, since Dick­ens teach­es chil­dren to love read­ing.
• Some­thing by P.G. Wode­house. How about Sun­set at Bland­ings?
• And, when it comes to phi­los­o­phy, a lit­tle Hume. David Hume, that is.

A detailed account of the con­ver­sa­tion by Mason Crumpack­er’s moth­er can be found here.

Mean­while, if you’re look­ing for anoth­er set of rec­om­men­da­tions, don’t miss this: Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read.

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