Useful summer reading list on the experience of childhood

Check out Caradoc King's top 10 childhood memoirs at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/01/caradoc-king-top-10-childhood-memoirs.  From Roald Dahl to Nigel Slater, the King chooses the best books about what it's really like to be young for the Guardian.  

Caradoc King is head of the literary agency AP Watt and represents a wide range of literary, commercial and children's authors.  His selection includes Nigel Slater's Toast that was adapted for Television and screened in December 2010.

If you want to keep your brain stimulated, speed up your reading, improve your writing, build your vocabulary and your general knowledge working your way through this list is a good idea.

The list includes, Jewish, Welsh, Scottish, Australian and Iranian childhoods but no Asian or African ones.  So for the sake of balance I would add Ake by Wole Soyinka and Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie to this list even though the latter is not a memoir it does have something to say about the experience of childhood.