Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Roald Dahl.

The darkly funny novel features Charlie Bucket, a boy living in poverty with his parents and grandparents. They live in a town that is home to a famous chocolate factory.

Black Beauty. 

Anna Sewell.

A handsome well-born, well-bred horse of the era before automobiles, narrates the story. He is initially owned by kind masters but is sold to successively cruler owners.

Eventually he collapses from overwork and ill treatment, but in the end he is sold to another kind owner and recovers. 

A Child Called It

Dave Pelzer

This book chronicles one of the worst cases of child abuse in Californian history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother, who played tortuous unpredictable games- games that left him nearly dead.

Dave had to learn how to play his mother’s games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an “it.”

Annie

Thomas Meehan

It’s a hard-knock life for America’s favourite orphan. Annie lives at Miss Hannigan’s orphanage until she beats the odds and finds a new life with the benevolent Mr Warbucks.

This is a novelisation of the classic story. The author delves deeper into Annie’s life during the Great Depression, finding Sandy the dog and meeting characters old and new.