Sounds refreshing right, a list without the bespectacled one? Well today I have picked my favourite childrens books and even The Prisoner of Azkaban could get it such is the quality…
- Sylvie and Bruno – Lewis Carroll
- The weirdstone of Brasingamen – Alan Garner
- The Wind in the willows – Kenneth Grahame
- Peter Pan – J. M Barrie
- The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Riddles of Epsilon – Christine Morton Shaw
- The Voyage of the Dawntreader – C. S. Lewis
- The Invention of Hugo Cabret – Brian Selznick
- Endymion Spring – Matthew Skelton
- Stig of the Dump – Clive King
- The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster
- Charlie and the chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
- The Coral Island – R. M Ballantyne
- Castle of Adventure – Enid Blyton
- The Neverending Story – Michael Ende
- The Voyage of the Arctic Tern – Hugh Montgomery
- The Iron Man – Ted Hughes
- Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Bear Called Paddington – Michael Bond
- Each Peach Pear Plum – Janet & Alan Ahlberg
Book to the Future 
This is an EXCELLENT list! We love Sylvie and Bruno at my house. But I’m a Winnie the Pooh girl myself. He would be at the top of my list. It’s fun to see all the “best” books lists coming out. They are all so different. As it should be I guess.
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You are the only other person who has ever mentioned reading Sylvie and Bruno, I’m glad I am not alone, it is such an overlooked book, glad to see it is getting the appreciation it deserves. Best books lists are great, they cause so much controversy, I am surprised I haven’t had the staunch Potter fans commenting yet…
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Well, here’s a Potter fan commenting……. no matter what critics say, HP got millions of children reading. Almost a billion books sold is proof of that. There are 5 of us in our household, one HP book was read by 4, and lent to 4 others, and goodness knows how many borrowed the book from libraries.JK Rowling’s story telling is amazing, and i think we have to give her credit for that. ^_^’
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I agree with you on everything you just said….except that after book four I felt the books went downhill, although 6 and 7 were miles better than book 5. Still getting kids reading in this day and age is extremely impressive. Long may it carry on!
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I can’t remember which book was Book, 5, ha ha ha, but to be honest, a lot of stuff didn’t make sense to my practical mind…. like why couldn’t the rest of the wizarding world take out the handful of bad guys early on. They all got bamboozled into submission, including Dumbledore and all the teachers who were very powerful. =_=’
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I love the word bamboozled, your use of it in a comment has made me very happy. You are of course right the logic of the books were somewhat questionable as was Northern Lights the way to overrated book by Philip Pullman. I think you should be a professional hole picker, the world is just waiting for one of those.
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A Bear called Paddington, lovely choice. What a wonderful list. A lot I’m unfamiliar with (I’m French so my childhood reading was a mix of French and English books as I eventually learned to speak and read English). I love reading children’s literature so will be adding these to my growing collection! The titles themselves sound delicious 🙂
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Always happy to badger you into even more books. It’s an eclectic mix as well, from adventure stories to fairytales. I’m glad I didn’t put them in any sort of order otherwise I would still have been arguing with myself. I shall also add on The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor as a bonus.
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Another one to add to my list 🙂
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I can picture you down the pub reading EachPeach….Endymion Spring was a good one too. And I liked the Neverending Story immensely…amazed that I’d got to the end of the movie bits and there was still more than half the book to go!
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As a child I wasn’t a fan of the movie, perhaps I should revisit it again. I remember a flying gerbil I think. The regulars at the pub are sometimes bemused to see me one week reading philosophy and the next week a children’s book. I just put myself down as another eccentric.
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Wonderful list! I admit I also had the same idea of listing mine. Anyway, I haven’t read some of the books in this list and I think it’s not yet late for me to check them out 🙂 My favorite in your list will be Roald Dahl’s and C.S. Lewis’
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Two great authors but the curse of coming to this site is that I load you down with lots of book ideas and money just doesn’t stretch that far. Thee is always a lottery win though, then I insist on being your personal shopper and buying you a ton of books.
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And here comes the Potter-fan!
Well, let me not keep this from you anymore J. Quite honestly, I sometimes feel envious of you. Given, you read so much and write much more than that. I constantly visit your site as I am almost always certain to find a new post, sometimes 2. The best part is you write everyday. And I have been literally struggling with my schedule since day1 to write everyday myself. But the time constraints. While I deeply admire your passion for writing, I hope that I also can start writing a post a day everyday. Some day, may be… I might start…!
Until then, I’ll keep coming, like I do…!
-Asha
P.S.: My list gets as never-ending as it can. I am not surprised that I haven’t read most of the books listed by you above (exception being THE HOBBIT & PETER PAN) but I hope to someday.
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You are in for a treat with the books that you are yet to experience. i hope they put a smile on your face as much as they did me. I try and keep at least an hour a day for writing, I structured it so that I can have one day furiously writing and planning and one day to tidy it up, sometimes I run to three days without a post because sometimes I do get a social life, a rare treat! I like to keep the site fresh for all my followers and of course when the inspiration takes me how can I fail to write?
I think it would be fantastic if you upped your posts numerically but like you say, hectic schedules put a dampener of things. Nonetheless I check back to your blog whenever I’m on. You always do very inspirational and enchanting posts so I am happy to red your words whenever you get tim to publish my good friend.
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Good list. I’m a bit tempted to re-read the weirdstone of Brasingamen. By the way I agree with your comments about Potter. I think you’ve got it about right.
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Way to much love for Potter these days, it’s amazing that any of these young people haven’t sampled the delights of such other gems as the above. The quest to educate the masses starts here.
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Good list. You’re right about Potter. I think I’m going to re-read the weirdstone of Brasingamen.
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Excellent, that claustrophobic bit gets no better even knowing the outcome. Gave me chills until I read Aku-Aku and that was intense in a real life claustrophobia type of way. Had to have a drink after that one.
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So many of those books are still so close to me heart. Will definitely check out the ones I haven’t heard of. One of my favourites as a kid was Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
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I haven’t heard of that one but I shall have a look at it, I always love a recommendation that i can add to the ridiculously big pile of things to read!
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Brilliant list, but no Carroll? I adore The Hobbit and anything by Dahl. Dahl and Blyton are my favourite children’s authors. I’d say Dahl was the daddy, if I were to use gangsta terminology. But I don’t.
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Word homeboy, or not. Sylvie and Bruno is a Carroll work, for some reason I adhered to an unwritten rule about only having one book per author, otherwise Alice would have got a mention.
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Instead of re-reading the Weirdstone of Brasingamen, I read Boneland instead. Glad I made it’s acquantance. It could be the best thing I’ve read in years.
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I had no idea he had done a third book, this is fantastic news…I will have to check it out now..With your praise of it, the intrigue is definitely upon me…
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