Friday, April 03, 2015

Charlotte's Web voted best children's book of all time

Critics around the world chose their top 21 books for under-10s in a BBC Culture poll – but what's yours?

Dakota Fanning as Fern in the 2006 film of Charlotte's Web
Dakota Fanning as Fern in the 2006 film of Charlotte's Web 
Charlotte's Web, EB White's classic 1952 book about a pig who is saved from slaughter by a resourceful spider, has been voted the best children's book of all time.
The book, which won the Newbery Medal in 1953, has been a consistent presence in "best of" children's literature lists, and has been turned into two films and a sequel, and even a computer game.
In the poll for BBC Culture, critics from around the world named 151 favourites which were whittled down to a top 21.

The result is a snapshot of classics from the past two centuries including Little Women and Alice in Wonderland, and ranges from picture books (Goodnight Moon) to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
11: Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie

CS Lewis's best-known Narnia book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, was placed second, followed by Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.
The almost mandatory inclusion of children's favourite, Roald Dahl, features two of his novels: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda.
Nicolette Jones, who reviews children's literature for the Telegraph, chose Kenneth Grahame's classic The Wind in the Willows. "For its beautiful writing and its appeal to all ages, but particularly because it is about two impulses that are so central to all our lives, especially as we grow up," she said. "The desire to go out and have adventures, to see and do everything, and the need for home and a place to belong."

50 books every child should read by 16

The top 21 books in children's literature 

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