10 Classic YA Books You Need To Read That Are Also Great Movies

When you get tired of hanging out in Forks and Panem, here are some classic books that are amazing reads and great films. Some might be hard to find but are worth the hunt. Hint: go check your parents bookshelf, you might already have them.

1. To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Inkymole Folio / Via mob.inkymole.com

"Scout and her older brother are children growing up in the backyards and fields of small-town Alabama in the 1930s.
Classics have a bad reputation partly they're so often assigned reading (not the best circumstance under which to meet a book), and stories of the small-town South never sounded that appealing to me. If you've been avoiding this book out of fear that it was literary without being entertaining, don't. The plot may not sound that appealing, but the characterization is exceptional and the dramatic payoff is one of the best I've read. Regardless of any deeper moral point, this is simply good storytelling and deserves to be as famous as it is. Russ Allbery

Rare interview with author Harper Lee

To Kill A Mockingbird Wikipedia pages for the book and film.

To Kill A Mockingbird Trailer

Atticus Finch is ranked first in the American Film Institute's Top 100 Greatest Screen Characters, Heroes and Villains (as a hero of course). This ranks him above Indiana Jones and James Bond!

Mary Badham was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Scout. She was only ten years old, and at the time she was the youngest person ever nominated for this category. Her older brother is film director John Badham

To Kill A Mockingbird IMDB page

2. Where The Lilies Bloom, Vera and Bill Cleaver

"Mary Call has promised her dying father to keep her brother and sisters together forever on the mountain, and never to take any help from strangers. She is determined to keep her word. No matter what. At first she is sure she can manage. Romey, Ima Dean, and Devola help gather herbs to sell in town; the riches of the mountains will surely keep the family clothed and fed. But then winter comes, fast and furious, and Mary Call has to learn that the land where the lilies bloom is also a cruel and unforgiving place, and it may take more than a promise to keep her family together. HarperTeen

Where The Lilies Bloom, theme song and film stills on YouTube

A page in New York Magazine about Robert Radnitz the producer of the film.

Interview with Earl Hammer who adapted the book for film.

Where The Lilies Bloom IMDB and Wikipedia page

3. Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell

"In the Pacific there is an island that looks like a big fish sunning itself in the sea. Around it, blue dolphins swim, otters play, and sea elephants and sea birds abound. Once, Indians also lived on the island. And when they left and sailed to the east, one young girl was left behind. This is the story of Karana, the Indian girl who lived alone for years on the Island of the Blue Dolphins. Year after year, she watched one season pass into another and waited for a ship to take her away. But while she waited, she kept herself alive by building a shelter, making weapons, finding food, and fighting her enemies, the wild dogs." Scholastic

The book is based on the true story of The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island

Watch this great mini documentary created by a fourth grader about her visit to the Blue Dolphin Museum at the Santa Barbara Mission.

The Lone Woman's cave home may have been recently discovered.

Island of the Blue Dolphin's Wikipedia page

Island of the Blue Dolphins, full film on YouTube

Celia Kaye won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer

Island of the Blue Dolphins IMDB page

4. Lord of The Flies, William Golding

Barron Storey / Via paulgravett.com

"It was, so far as I can remember, the first book with hands – strong ones that reached out of the pages and seized me by the throat. It said to me, ‘This is not just entertainment; it’s life-or-death.' In the aftermath of a plane crash, a group of British boys become a microcosm of all that is good and bad in society. Some, like Ralph, rely on utilitarian rules to promote order. Others align with Jack to rely on savagery for survival – with tragic consequences." Stephen King

Lord of the Flies Wikipedia pages for the book and links to both film adaptations.

NY Times article on author William Golding

Lord of the Flies, full film on YouTube (1963)

A portion on YouTube of a documentary on the reunion of the original cast, 30 years after the film release.

Lord of the Flies IMDB page

5. The Outsiders

"The Outsiders is about a gang of “greasers,” or underprivileged teenagers, living on the east side of Tulsa, Oklahoma. They are constantly under attack from the rich west-side Socs, and have parties and rumbles all the time. The narrator, the orphan Ponyboy Curtis, pretty much knows what to expect from his day - school, track, homework, football at the lot - until one of his friends takes the greaser-Soc battle too far." Teen Ink

Audio interview by Elizabeth Bird with author SE Hinton on American Icons.

The book's Wikipedia page

Susan Eloise Hinton started writing the book when she was 15, finished it when she was 16, and it was published when she was 18.

Librarian Jo Ellen Misakian and the students of Lone Star School wrote to Francis Ford Coppola asking him to turn The Outsiders into a movie. He did.

The Outsiders Film Trailer

Francis Ford Coppola talks about The Outsiders.

Where are they now? Looking Back on the Cast of The Outsiders

The Outsiders IMDB and Wikipedia pages.

6. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

Via smithsonianmag.com

"The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens's tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters—the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama, Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery." Goodreads

Could this be the real Oliver Twist?

The Oliver Twist Wikipedia page

Oliver Twist Film Trailer

There are so many great versions of this film, including a musical (Ah! That's where those songs came from!) so have a "Twist Festival" and compare them all.

7. The Yearling, Marjorie Rawlings

"'The Yearling' by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, is the only Pulitzer Prize winning novel found in the children's section of your local library or bookstore. Unlike the novels about dysfunction and human tragedy, both epic and intimate, of which there are many, this winner wrote a story about a golden time, after the Civil War and before electricity and automobiles, and a young boy, whose idyllic childhood arched through this time, on an island of long leaf pines in the center of "the rolling sea that was the scrub" in a sort of endless halcyon mist.
What follows is a love story between boy and fawn, and a coming of age story. The next year, Jody raises the fawn, and grows himself from boy to young boy on the cusp of manhood." Moira Cue

Based on true stories the Reuben Long Family told Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

Hike The Yearling Trail. A further exploration of the region of the Ocala Forest where the story took place.

The Yearling's Wikipedia page

The Yearling, pt 1 on YouTube

Actor Claude Jarman Jr revisits the Florida locations of the film.

Memories of working on The Yearling by people who were there. On Location, The Central Florida of The Yearling, on NPR

The Yearling's IMDB page

8. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster

"Milo’s journey, at first undertaken with a shrug, transforms itself into a quest, one that takes him from Expectations, through Dictionopolis, Digitopolis, and the Mountains of Ignorance, to the Castle in the Air, where a pair of princesses, Rhyme and Reason, languish in captivity. Clearly the geography and topography of the Kingdom of Wisdom, like the plot of the novel, emit a powerful whiff of the allegorical; yet somehow, through the wit and artistry and recursive playfulness of its author, Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth manages to surmount the insurmountable obstacle that allegory ordinarily presents to pleasure." NY Books

This book is equally famous for the illustrations by Jules Feiffer

VIDEO: Meet both Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer

The Phantom Tollbooth's Wikipedia page

The Phantom Tollbooth film trailer on YouTube

TCM article about director and animator Chuck Jones. "Bugs Bunny, The Roadrunner, Wile E. Coyote, and....Milo? If the last name seems unfamiliar, it shouldn't. They were all drawn by the master animator Chuck Jones"

The Phantom Tollbooth IMDB page

9. Watership Down, Richard Adams

"From blood and the thump of fear to the pleasure of good feeding, the discovery of new surroundings or the texture of the day, we are immersed in the rabbits' world... one might, at the same time, be reading some gripping escape story, the rabbit characters are so totally credible" The Times Literary Supplement

Audio interview with author Richard Adams

The true inspiration behind the book

The real life location of Watership Down in Central England.

The book's Wikipedia page

The Lapine Language Glossary

Watership Down Film Trailer

Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes, theme song and sequence on YouTube

Great informative article/review The Animated World of Richard Adams

Article on John Hubley, animator and former director of Watership Down.

Watership Down's IMDB page

10. Animal Farm, George Orwell

"Animal Farm is a biting satire of totalitarianism, written in the wake of World War II and published amid the rise of Soviet Russia. Although it tells a fairly simple story of barnyard animals trying to manage themselves after rebelling against their masters, the novel demonstrates how easily good intentions can be subverted into tyranny." Michael Berry, Common Sense Media

Animal Farm's Wikipedia page for the book

George Orwell's preface to Animal Farm that had been suppressed.

Test your Animal Farm knowledge with this quiz on Goodreads

Animal Farm, full film on YouTube

Animal Farm's IMDB page

British Pathé documentary clip from The Making of Animal Farm Cartoon

There are many more!

Some books I love like True Grit, Bridge to Terebithia and Where the Wild Things Are, for example, were recently made into films. I wanted to share books and films here that seem to have been forgotten by some in hopes new readers and viewers will re-discover them. Add your fave book/movie combo from the past.