Through the years, BBC Tradition has carried out main polls of movie and TV critics, specialists and business figures from around the globe to determine on the best movies and TV reveals in a specific class: you could have seen our 100 greatest TV shows of the 21st Century in 2021, for instance, or our 100 greatest films directed by women record in 2019. Nevertheless, for this 12 months’s ballot, we felt we wanted to lastly flip our consideration to a different artwork type so deeply embedded in all our lives – books. And there’s no number of books extra embedded in them than youngsters’s literature – in spite of everything, no matter our pastimes as we get older, many people share within the pleasure of studying at a younger age, out and in of college.
Learn extra about BBC Tradition’s 100 biggest youngsters’s books:
–The 100 greatest children’s books
–Why Where the Wild Things Are is the greatest children’s book
– The 20 greatest children’s books
– The 21st Century’s greatest children’s books
– Who voted?
#100GreatestChildrensBooks
It additionally felt like simply the second to survey youngsters’s books due to the current dialog round how they’re sorely undervalued in comparison with grownup literature. In an interview final 12 months, on BBC Radio 4’s As we speak programme, the author Frank Cottrell-Boyce powerfully lamented the present lack of dialog round youngsters’s books. “There’s not the crucial dialogue there must be, round [them] in any respect,” he said – a view backed up simply final week by The Gruffalo writer Julia Donaldson on the identical present.
Nevertheless, if nice youngsters’s writing is just not receiving the crucial respect it ought to today, then it definitely continues to make information headlines – that are, for higher or worse, a reminder of how core it’s to our existence. Lately for instance, there’s been the furore over the rewriting of Roald Dahl’s novels for contemporary sensibilities – and extra typically, the widespread concern over the rising motion within the US in direction of banning children’s books, together with many coping with racial and LGBTQ+ themes. All in all, then, it felt like the fitting time to do our bit to each give youngsters’s literature its due and take into account what has made and continues to make nice youngsters’s writing. And so, in an effort to do this, we have now determined to ask many specialists a quite simple query: what’s the biggest youngsters’s guide of all time?
Whereas after all removed from definitive, the solutions we have now gleaned are fascinating – and we hope will make readers each wistful for the books they beloved of their youth and able to check out titles that handed them by, or had been revealed after they got here of age; for there isn’t any purpose that the best youngsters’s literature should not be equally nourishing to an grownup. In whole, 1050 completely different books had been voted for by 177 specialists – critics, authors and publishing figures – who got here from 56 nations, from Austria to Uzbekistan. Of those voters, 133 had been feminine, 41 had been male and three most popular to not say. Every voter listed their 10 biggest youngsters’s books, which we scored and ranked to supply the highest 100 listed beneath.
The top result’s a listing that displays the huge scope of youngsters’s literature via the eras, standing as a tribute to its boundless creativeness, thrilling storytelling, and profound themes – from the Panchatantra, a set of Indian youngsters’s tales relationship again to the 2nd Century BCE, to the most recent guide within the record, A Type of Spark, revealed in 2020. In fact, although, simply because the record celebrates an enormous scope of labor, it additionally has its limitations and biases. For instance, 74 of the 100 books featured had been first revealed within the English language, with the following hottest language being Swedish, with 9 entries. In the meantime books revealed between the Fifties and Nineteen Seventies had been most prevalent, which can be associated to the age profile of voters, the vast majority of whom had been born within the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties. Fourteen of the highest 100 books had been revealed on this century – and it could be fascinating to see what number of different newer books may be included, ought to we repeat the ballot in 10 or 20 years’ time. Given the publishing business’s continued efforts to create a extra inclusive panorama, one might additionally anticipate the record of authors to diversify additional.
To accompany the highest 100, you possibly can learn a sequence of items reflecting on the outcomes of the ballot. These embody an essay about the poll winner, Maurice Sendak’s beloved picture book Where the Wild Things Are; a piece giving a detailed rundown of the top 20, and what voters stated about them; and an article on the poll’s 21st-Century books and the way they mirror how youngsters’s literature is evolving. And that is simply the beginning: in coming weeks, we may also publish a sequence of options attending to grips with some key books and authors within the ballot, and the concepts they embody, in addition to a few of the main points surrounding youngsters’s publishing right this moment.
In fact, the record is just not designed as a fait accompli, however quite as an inspiration for additional discovery and debate. Inform us what you assume – and what you assume is lacking – utilizing the hashtag #100GreatestChildrensBooks. We hope that you simply discover the ballot as fascinating and illuminating as we have now – as a celebration of writing, creativity and the books which have really formed us all.
1 The place the Wild Issues Are (Maurice Sendak, 1963)
2 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)
3 Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren, 1945)
4 The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943)
5 The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien, 1937)
6 Northern Lights (Philip Pullman, 1995)
7 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (CS Lewis, 1950)
8 Winnie-the-Pooh (AA Milne and EH Shepard, 1926)
9 Charlotte’s Internet (EB White and Garth Williams, 1952)
10 Matilda (Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake, 1988)
11 Anne of Inexperienced Gables (LM Montgomery, 1908)
12 Fairy Tales (Hans Christian Andersen, 1827)
13 Harry Potter and the Thinker’s Stone (JK Rowling, 1997)
14 The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle, 1969)
15 The Darkish is Rising (Susan Cooper, 1973)
16 The Arrival (Shaun Tan, 2006)
17 Little Girls (Louisa Could Alcott, 1868)
18 Charlie and the Chocolate Manufacturing facility (Roald Dahl, 1964)
19 Heidi (Johanna Spyri, 1880)
20 Goodnight Moon (Margaret Smart Brown and Clement Hurd, 1947)
21 The Adventures of Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi, 1883)
22 A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula Okay Le Guin, 1968)
23 Moominland Midwinter (Tove Jansson, 1957)
24 I Need My Hat Again (Jon Klassen, 2011)
25 The Secret Backyard (Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911)
26 Duck, Dying and the Tulip (Wolf Erlbruch, 2007)
27 The Brothers Lionheart (Astrid Lindgren, 1973)
28 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (JK Rowling, 1999)
29 Brown Lady Dreaming (Jacqueline Woodson, 2014)
30 The Three Robbers (Tomi Ungerer, 1961)
31 The Snowy Day (Ezra Jack Keats, 1962)
32 The Tiger Who Got here to Tea (Judith Kerr, 1968)
33 Howl’s Shifting Fort (Diana Wynne Jones, 1986)
34 A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L’Engle, 1962)
35 Watership Down (Richard Adams, 1972)
36 Tom’s Midnight Backyard (Philippa Pearce, 1958)
37 Grimm’s Fairy Tales (Brothers Grimm, 1812)
38 The Story of Peter Rabbit (Beatrix Potter, 1902)
39 The Railway Youngsters (Edith Nesbit, 1906)
40 Noughts and Crosses (Malorie Blackman, 2001)
41 The BFG (Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake, 1982)
42 Guidelines of Summer time (Shaun Tan, 2013)
43 Momo (Michael Ende, 1973)
44 The Story of Ferdinand (Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson, 1936)
45 The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien, 1954)
46 The Owl Service (Alan Garner, 1967)
47 Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter (Astrid Lindgren, 1981)
48 The Neverending Story (Michael Ende, 1979)
49 The Panchatantra (Nameless / folks, -200)
50 Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883)
51 Mary Poppins (PL Travers, 1934)
52 Ballet Footwear (Noel Streafield, 1936)
53 So A lot! (Trish Cooke and Helen Oxenbury, 1994)
54 We’re Happening a Bear Hunt (Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury, 1989)
55 The Adventures of Cipollino (Gianni Rodari, 1951)
56 The Giving Tree (Shel Silverstein, 1964)
57 The Gruffalo (Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, 1999)
58 Julián Is a Mermaid (Jessica Love, 2018)
59 Comet in Moominland (Tove Jansson, 1946)
60 Finn Household Moomintroll (Tove Jansson, 1948)
61 The Witches (Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake, 1983)
62 A Bear Known as Paddington (Michael Bond, 1958)
63 The Wind within the Willows (Kenneth Grahame, 1908)
64 Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Mildred D Taylor, 1977)
65 Karlsson-on-the-Roof (Astrid Lindgren, 1955)
66 The Phantom Tollbooth (Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer, 1961)
67 The Cat within the Hat (Dr Seuss, 1957)
68 The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (Kate DiCamillo and Bagram Ibatoulline, 2006)
69 Peter and Wendy (JM Barrie, 1911)
70 One Thousand and One Nights (Nameless / folks)
71 From the Blended-Up Information of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler (EL Konigsburg, 1967)
72 When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (Judith Kerr, 1971)
73 Shum bola (G’afur G’ulоm, 1936)
73 Ernest and Celestine (Gabrielle Vincent, 1981)
75 A Type of Spark (Elle McNicoll, 2020)
76 Little Nicholas (René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé, 1959)
77 Black Magnificence (Anna Sewell, 1877)
78 Daddy-Lengthy-Legs (Jean Webster, 1912)
79 No Kiss for Mom (Tomi Ungerer, 1973)
80 My Household and Different Animals (Gerald Durrell, 1956)
81 Jacob Have I Beloved (Katherine Paterson, 1980)
81 The Lorax (Dr Seuss, 1971)
83 Fairy Tales / The Tales of Mom Goose (Charles Perrault, 1697)
84 The Moomins and the Nice Flood (Tove Jansson, 1945)
85 The Great Wizard of Oz (L Frank Baum, 1900)
86 Simply William (Richmal Crompton, 1922)
87 The Twits (Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake, 1980)
87 The Mouse and His Youngster (Russell Hoban, 1967)
87 Out of My Thoughts (Sharon M Draper, 2010)
87 Moominvalley in November (Tove Jansson, 1970)
87 Little Home within the Massive Woods (Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1932)
92 Danny the Champion of the World (Roald Dahl, 1975)
93 The Snowman (Raymond Briggs, 1978)
94 Wave (Suzy Lee, 2008)
95 The Black Brothers (Lisa Tetzner, 1940)
96 The Velveteen Rabbit (Margery Williams, 1921)
97 The Unhealthy Starting (Lemony Snicket, 1999)
98 The Graveyard E book (Neil Gaiman, 2008)
99 American Born Chinese language (Gene Luen Yang and Lark Pien, 2006)
100 Haroun and the Sea of Tales (Salman Rushdie, 1990)
Learn extra about BBC Tradition’s 100 biggest youngsters’s books:
–The 100 greatest children’s books
–Why Where the Wild Things Are is the greatest children’s book
– The 20 greatest children’s books
– The 21st Century’s greatest children’s books
– Who voted?
#100GreatestChildrensBooks
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