Every "books every child should read" list is the same list — the canon, recycled. Here's a different approach: define the list by what books should do for a child, then let any title that does the job qualify. Ten jobs, ten slots.
The jobs list
Every child should read (or be read)... a book that names their feelings (emotional vocabulary is meltdown infrastructure — a feelings-festival with an Anger Alley does it), a book where the hero fails and it's fine (the failure-as-learning frame, pre-installed before school tests it), a book where friends fight and repair (conflict repair is the friendship skill), a book where the quiet one matters (for every temperament in the room), a book that celebrates their difference (the concert where every act is different), a book with a character they claim as theirs (character bonds create readers), a book funny enough to quote at breakfast, a book they've heard forty times (repetition is where the vocabulary lives — the sturdiest finding in the read-aloud research at Reading Rockets), a book that ends calm enough for sleep, and a book that's part of a series (one loved book converting into ten is how readers get made).
Filling all ten slots
Classics fill some jobs beautifully; a well-built modern series can fill the full card. Zumblies Season 1 was written against this exact jobs list — ten books, ten jobs, $39 instead of $70.
List the jobs. Fill the slots. ✅