The greatest children's book ever
Jun. 7th, 2023 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustBBC Culture (whatever that is) has conducted a poll to find the 100 greatest children's books of all time: timely, they explain, because authors have been lamenting on the Today programme the absence of critical discussion about books for children. Right... Oh, and "[o]f course the list is not designed as a fait accompli, but rather as an inspiration for further discovery and debate. Tell us what you think - and what you think is missing - using the hashtag #100GreatestChildrensBooks." In other words, it's an intellectually more respectable form of clickbait. How could I resist?
I'm not sure I would have declared Where the Wild Things Are the Best Children's Book Every but it seems seems like a perfectly reasonable choice. You'd think that producing a Top 100 list would be less controversial than declaring a single Best Book Ever: but no. Or perhaps it's just that I don't feel capable of selecting a single best book, but I think I could draw up a list of the best hundred. Not that that's what the contributors were asked for: instead they - all 177 of them - were asked for a list of their top ten. That full list makes fascinating reading, which is one reason why this post has been so long in the writing: I keep thinking well, OK, so [insert favourite writer here] didn't make the final cut, but did no-one mention them? Frances Hardinge, Joan Aiken, Rosemary Sutcliff (The Eagle of the Ninth, of course), Anne Fine are all on the 'also nominated' list; Peter Dickinson not even there... You can play this game as well as I can.
In some ways, the top hundred list itself is surprisingly conservative. I didn't recognise any of those names who dominate the best-seller lists to the loud disapproval of the experts - no Captain Underpants, no Wimpy Kid, no David Walliams - presumably because all the nominations come from experts. BookTok has no obvious influence here. Yet there are six Roald Dahl titles (starting with Matilda at number 10) which seems excessive*.
The second greatest children's book ever, after Where the Wild Things Are, is Alice in Wonderland: the newest book in the top 10 is Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, 1995 (which I'm assuming is the first book of the trilogy, under its UK title). We don't reach the 21st century until number 16, with Shaun Tan's The Arrival - the first point at which I was startled into saying "No! That's not a children's book!"** (Nor is The Lord of the Rings, or at least some of the collections of folk tales, but these are more familiar battlegrounds). Perhaps what's going on with Shaun Tan is the feeling that graphic narrative = picture book (Tan's The Rules of Summer also makes the list) = children. But then, how to interpret the case of René Goscinny? He is on the list at number 76 for Le Petit Nicolas, illustrated by cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé, which has three nominations on the full list, in three different languages. I've never read it, though I have now ordered a copy. But I'll be very surprised if it is anywhere near as good as his long-lasting collaboration with Albert Uderzo (a single nomination for Astérix et Clépatra).
This wasn't the only point on the list where I had a moment of right author, wrong title. When it comes to E. Nesbit, I'm used to this. The Railway Children usually tops the list, and this one is no exception: you have to go to the individual lists to find any of her magical stories. Do real-world, non-magical stories score higher, or is the effect of a successful film? My affection for Howl's Moving Castle is a matter of record, but how much does it owe its high score to Studio Ghibli? Is it a better book than Fire and Hemlock? Really?
There is no conclusion to be reached. You pays your money and you takes your choice.
*It's not the most striking example of multiple-titles-by-one-author. The introduction comments that "74 of the 100 books featured were first published in the English language, with the next most popular language being Swedish, with nine entries," but does not go on to point out that those nine entries come from just two authors (five from Tove Jansson, four from Astrid Lindgren).
**I don't know why I object to certain titles being labelled as "children's books". It's not as if that stops me reading them; and there are other books I esteem just as highly and am perfectly happy to label that way...
I'm not sure I would have declared Where the Wild Things Are the Best Children's Book Every but it seems seems like a perfectly reasonable choice. You'd think that producing a Top 100 list would be less controversial than declaring a single Best Book Ever: but no. Or perhaps it's just that I don't feel capable of selecting a single best book, but I think I could draw up a list of the best hundred. Not that that's what the contributors were asked for: instead they - all 177 of them - were asked for a list of their top ten. That full list makes fascinating reading, which is one reason why this post has been so long in the writing: I keep thinking well, OK, so [insert favourite writer here] didn't make the final cut, but did no-one mention them? Frances Hardinge, Joan Aiken, Rosemary Sutcliff (The Eagle of the Ninth, of course), Anne Fine are all on the 'also nominated' list; Peter Dickinson not even there... You can play this game as well as I can.
In some ways, the top hundred list itself is surprisingly conservative. I didn't recognise any of those names who dominate the best-seller lists to the loud disapproval of the experts - no Captain Underpants, no Wimpy Kid, no David Walliams - presumably because all the nominations come from experts. BookTok has no obvious influence here. Yet there are six Roald Dahl titles (starting with Matilda at number 10) which seems excessive*.
The second greatest children's book ever, after Where the Wild Things Are, is Alice in Wonderland: the newest book in the top 10 is Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, 1995 (which I'm assuming is the first book of the trilogy, under its UK title). We don't reach the 21st century until number 16, with Shaun Tan's The Arrival - the first point at which I was startled into saying "No! That's not a children's book!"** (Nor is The Lord of the Rings, or at least some of the collections of folk tales, but these are more familiar battlegrounds). Perhaps what's going on with Shaun Tan is the feeling that graphic narrative = picture book (Tan's The Rules of Summer also makes the list) = children. But then, how to interpret the case of René Goscinny? He is on the list at number 76 for Le Petit Nicolas, illustrated by cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé, which has three nominations on the full list, in three different languages. I've never read it, though I have now ordered a copy. But I'll be very surprised if it is anywhere near as good as his long-lasting collaboration with Albert Uderzo (a single nomination for Astérix et Clépatra).
This wasn't the only point on the list where I had a moment of right author, wrong title. When it comes to E. Nesbit, I'm used to this. The Railway Children usually tops the list, and this one is no exception: you have to go to the individual lists to find any of her magical stories. Do real-world, non-magical stories score higher, or is the effect of a successful film? My affection for Howl's Moving Castle is a matter of record, but how much does it owe its high score to Studio Ghibli? Is it a better book than Fire and Hemlock? Really?
There is no conclusion to be reached. You pays your money and you takes your choice.
*It's not the most striking example of multiple-titles-by-one-author. The introduction comments that "74 of the 100 books featured were first published in the English language, with the next most popular language being Swedish, with nine entries," but does not go on to point out that those nine entries come from just two authors (five from Tove Jansson, four from Astrid Lindgren).
**I don't know why I object to certain titles being labelled as "children's books". It's not as if that stops me reading them; and there are other books I esteem just as highly and am perfectly happy to label that way...
