Not only is it hilariously funny it's also full of the tribulations of life and how the system—bureaucracies—here the army—lands one in absurd and unexpected situations.
It's a great shame Hašek died so young (he was a great observer of human nature).
Do yourself a real favor, read it or get an audio book.
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.
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.
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.
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose
Bohumil Hrabal: Cutting it Short
Antal Szerb: The Pendragon Legend
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.
* 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)
In addition to what the other replies recommended, I read Tom Sharpe at a young age and enjoyed all of them with sometimes uncontrollable giggles.
Start with Wilt, I think. Then maybe The Throwback.
His short stories are beyond fascinating and adorable, BTW. One, for example, equates accounting to hunting and detective work.
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.
Works of James Herriot.
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?
Also, the secret to exiting the school (getting past the guardian) was pretty cool.
I disliked it as a kid for the same reasons I've loved it (and Exupéry's other aviator stories) as adult: it's abstract and impressionist.
Intruder in the Dust, the best of William Faulkner's "young adult" novels. The short story collection Knight's Gambit is also well worth a look.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My mother read it to me before I could read. I thought it was a great adventure book!
For a child, it's a slapstick comedy about Satan's retinue's visit to Soviet Moscow.
For a teen, it's a savage political satire taking down Stalinism.
For an adult, it's philosophy...
https://paradiseeditions.net/products/the-man-without-a-tran...
it is now forbidden to call war by its name ? /s
Vanity Fair by Thackeray
Mr Johnson by Joyce Cary
Lavengro and Romany Rye by George Borrow
The Descent of Woman by Elaine Morgan
Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofstadter et al.
Identity Crisis by Ben Elton
From https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/theater/newsandfeatures/t...
"Heller, who died in 1999, told various interviewers that Céline and Kafka were his most powerful influences and that "Svejk" was "just a funny book.""
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2011/08/heller-201108
"The Czech writer Arnošt Lustig claimed that Heller had told him at a New York party for Milos Forman in the late 1960s that he couldn’t have written Catch-22 without first reading Jaroslav Hašek’s unfinished World War I satire, The Good Soldier Schweik. "
There's a place for hope in Catch-22.
In Svejk, the gruesome absurdity of the war prevails in all situations.
Rather I thought Catch-22 to be a so-so imitation of Švejk.
Then again I've been re-reading Švejk since childhood.
Similarly, how you can tell when Hasek dies before finishing Švejk and his friend takes over with the ending, the jokes just fall off a bit.
Svejk is generally funnier, IMO
It's the Catch-22 of WW1.
A bit more gruesome and obscene, both less serious and much darker than Catch-22, and highlighting a wider scope of social (and military) issues.