Švejk is what I call a "scalable" book. It works for readers of almost any level. The first time I read it I was maybe 8 years old and had a lot of fun, even though I completely missed most of the nuance.
The lord of the rings is a good one, especially if you skip the songs. Then it’s simply an adventure story.
The Sword in the Stone is pretty good in this regard. Apart from that first book (which is published as a standalone book) the entire Once and Future King is too complex for a child, I think (instead it would come off as boring and obscure).
But in general almost any book a kid wants to try to read will be fine.
Also: back in the day when small towns had a single cinema screen, movies would travel around as physical media and play for a week or two. So they had to be appropriate for anyone in town else the cinema owner wouldn’t take them.
My kid loved those Fred Astaire musicals. I do too. For him they were just fun. To me, many of them were quite racy and quite explicit! But all that just went over his head.
My neighbor gave me a great tip: check out anything by Terry Pratchett that I can find in the youth fiction section of the library. My wife and I are reading them to children ages 9 - 16, and all of them are liking the books.
It can easily be read as funny little books following the sagas of recuring (anti)heroes. But the light-hearted stories belie a sharp-eyed critique of society, with the most well known example probably being Vimes' Boot theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
Often, the subtility is hidden in a word or a choice of words that can easily go unnoticed, but are all small hints of the vast pluridisciplinary depth of knowledge of the author. The esoteric, historical, literary and physical sciences references (to name just them), are delightful small winks to the reader sprinkled throughout the books.
The Wind in the Willows. As a child, I read it purely as an adventure story. Re-reading it as an adult, I realized it's actually two stories: one a eulogy to the British countryside, and the other a comedy about the self-inflicted troubles of Mr. Toad. The humor was lost on me as a child.
I would dispute at least "The Name of the Rose", I'd say it's just a multi layered story.
A good portion of the book are philosophical discussions, which would be IMHO very boring and not understandable for small children.
The magic of novels like Svejk or Little Prince is that those extra layers are mostly implied, emergent, they're not written out explicitly and thus don't bore out the young readers.
This one is a little difficult: the book is laden with multilingual dialogue and notes apparatus; it's not for everybody. That said, I first read The Name of the Rose when I was 11 or 12, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Personal anecdote - I rather enjoyed reading "Name of the rose" as a kid. I don't remember how old I was at the time, maybe somewhere around 11-13. While I obviously didn't understand a lot of the details at the time, I remember vaguely feeling that there was something deeper than just a murder plot. All in all, it was a pretty good experience, and served as my gateway drug into other books by Eco.
IIRC, the name for rabbit was kebbo or something like that, so if you called out the true name for rabbit, any and all rabbits would be affected. This would then hold for petals as well?
Young Adult fiction is my "go-to" place for this. Nearly anything that has won the Newberry Award is great for the whole family. Some standouts in my mind:
* Island of the Blue Dolphins
* Chronicles of Prydain (Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, etc)
Chronicles of Narnia aren't Newberry winners, but are good regardless (if you don't mind the religious subtext).
+1 for other people mentioning The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
Our whole family has enjoyed classics like Pride and Prejudice and Dracula -- such books are called "classics" for a reason.
Modern YA fiction has some very good books as well -- we all enjoyed Hole by Louis Sachar.
Some good modern sci-fi too -- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir was well received, as was Ender's Game.
Brandon Sanderson's stuff is very good. Whole family enjoyed The Way of Kings and the books that follow.
(For context, "whole family" is mix of genders, ages 10-15)
Catch-22. I was maybe 11 on my first reading, and read it once a year until I was 19 or so. The book grew darker and darker on each reading, without changing a word. (I've read it a bunch of times since, just not every year. )
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My mother read it to me before I could read. I thought it was a great adventure book!
Jules Verne, just about everything he wrote. We had a collection of his books from the early 1910's which I read from around age 11. Get either those old copies or reprints which include the wood cut illustrations.
Yes! "Moominpappa at Sea" is wonderful. There's melancholy, sea horses, mischief, the creeping gothic horror of the Groke, whisky and pipe smoking, existential crises, dilapidated lighthouses and confused fishermen. Something for kids of all ages.
Oh yeah? I’ll add it to my list. I’ve served and I was thinking of passing on it.
Luckily I was well versed before I showed up to Uncle Sam’s doorstep. Catch-22 paints paints a good picture. And had a high counselor who was a Vietnam vet and said Apocalypse Now was the most realistic Vietnam movie he’d. And I can’t say that my experiences in were too far from my expectations.
I think the thing people don’t get about the military, at least speaking of my experience in the US’s, is even in places like special operations units and doing the stuff that reads great in a newspaper, often enough there’s an absolute, epic, comedic shitshow going on inside with a cast of characters that you couldn’t even do justice to in a goofball comedy. Suppose that might apply to lots of things. Luckily, no military really has to have their shit together, they just gotta be better than the other side.
One of Napoleon's cavalry generals said his average trooper's horsemanship was mediocre at best, yet they still made the tour of Europe. (Later, in the time of Napoleon III, the Prussians would outdo the French in utilizing mediocrity, providing yet another example that for a conscripted military, quantity is its own quality)
