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Puffin's 70th anniversary list of top 70 children's books
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7826

Author:  Alison H [ Fri May 07, 2010 11:11 am ]
Post subject:  Puffin's 70th anniversary list of top 70 children's books

The Best Mischief and Mayhem
The Twits by Roald Dahl
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog by Jeremy Strong
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend

The Best Weepies
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Truth about Leo by David Yelland
Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

The Best to Cuddle-Up With
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
The Bog Baby by Jeanne Willis & Gwen Millward
Peepo! by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy by Lynley Dodd

The Best Blood and Guts
The Enemy by Charlie Higson
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Being by Kevin Brooks
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Best Swashbucklers and Derring-Do
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs by Giles Andreae & Russell Ayto
Young Samurai: The Way of the Warrior by Chris Bradford
Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green

The Best Heroes

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Young Bond: SilverFin by Charlie Higson
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Best Characters
Charlie and Lola: Excuse Me But That is My Book by Lauren Child
Meg and Mog by Helen Nicoll & Jan Pienkowski
Angelina Ballerina by Katharine Holabird & Helen Craig
Fungus the Bogeyman by Raymond Briggs

The Best Sugar and Spice
Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories by Joyce Lankester Brisley
The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
The Princess and the Pea by Lauren Child & Polly Borland

The Best Animals
Spy Dog by Andrew Cope
The Sheep-Pig by Dick King-Smith
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
Lionboy by Zizou Corder

The Best Friends and Family

Dizzy by Cathy Cassidy
The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Family From One End Street by Eve Garnett
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

The Best Phizzwhizzers
The BFG by Roald Dahl
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl

The Best War and Conflict
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Once by Morris Gleitzman
Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian
Carrie's War by Nina Bawden

The Best BEST BEST BEST!

Stig of the Dump by Clive King
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Junk by Melvin Burgess

The Best Fantasy and Adventure
TimeRiders by Alex Scarrow
Dot Robot by Jason Bradbury
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

The Best Weird and Wonderful
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Five Children and It by E Nesbitt
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

The Best Rhymes and Verse
Please Mrs Butler by Allan Ahlberg
Michael Rosen's A-Z The best children's poetry from Agard to Zephaniah
Talking Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah
Bad Bad Cats by Roger McGough

The Best Alternatives to Twilight

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
The Luxe by Anna Godbersen
Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

The fact that there's a "best alternatives to Twilight" category, no "best school story" category and not an Enid Blyton book in sight makes me feel like a leftover from another era ...

Author:  Sarah_G-G [ Fri May 07, 2010 11:50 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Puffin's 70th anniversary list of top 70 children's books

On the plus side though, there's still Anne of, Little Women and Ballet Shoes for the GO genre. Plus books like Huckleberry Finn, Charlotte's Web, The Family from One End Street, all four books in the "weird and wonderful" category, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Treasure Island for similar era books. And all the Roald Dahl ones, Anne Frank, Charlotte's Web, The Very Hungry Caterpillar ( :) ), Peepo ( :D ), The Hound of the Baskervilles, Milly-Molly-Mandy, The Worst Witch (school story of a sort?), The Sheep-Pig, The Borrowers, Goodnight Mr Tom, Carrie's War, Stig of the Dump, Please Mrs Butler, and Michael Rosen's poetry, which have all been around for at least 20 years as they all bring back fond, cosy memories for me. Oh, and Earthsea, though I can't say I'd have considered it a classic. I expect I've missed a couple more old ones as well.

See? I don't think we're all that hopelessly out of date, Twilight aside. :roll: I am amused by the category of "Phizzwizzers," which looks a lot like someone decided they needed more Roald Dahl books on the list but couldn't figure out where to put them! :lol: It does seem odd not to see a single Enid Blyton on the list though, or any pony books for that matter. I'm sure there were loads around 10 or 15 years ago. Do little girls not go through the pony phase any more?

Author:  abbeybufo [ Fri May 07, 2010 12:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Puffin's 70th anniversary list of top 70 children's books

Alison H wrote:
The fact that there's a "best alternatives to Twilight" category, no "best school story" category and not an Enid Blyton book in sight makes me feel like a leftover from another era ...


I don't think Puffin ever published school stories or EB though, did they? Suspect Kaye Webb would not have approved ...

Author:  Elder in Ontario [ Fri May 07, 2010 1:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Puffin's 70th anniversary list of top 70 children's books

In the absence of evidence to the contrary (and I haven't been anywhere else on the web to check) I would think this is Puffin's list of the top 70 books they themselves have published over the 70 years. Like Abbeybufo, I don't think they ever published school stories or EB.

Author:  KathrynW [ Fri May 07, 2010 4:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Puffin's 70th anniversary list of top 70 children's books

Yup, this list was posted on the GO reading list today and someone made the point that it's just the books that Puffin/Penguin have published as it's to mark the 70th anniversary of the first Puffin book.

Author:  lizarfau [ Sat May 08, 2010 6:33 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Puffin's 70th anniversary list of top 70 children's books

Puffin never published Enid Blyton, but they did publish school stories - Antonia Forest's four Kingsote books were published by them, even with Kaye Webb there! Later on down the track they published Anne Digby's Trebizon.

Author:  Dawn [ Sat May 08, 2010 12:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Puffin's 70th anniversary list of top 70 children's books

It is indeed purely the books that Puffin have published and there was an article about it on the bbc site. Just counted up and I've read 37 of them, although not necesarily the Puffin editions - 2 of my Milly-Molly-Mandy ones are the ones my mother had and are first edition hardbacks and more than 70 years old, sadly they're in appalling condition having had a rather hard life.

Author:  Pado [ Wed May 12, 2010 11:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Puffin's 70th anniversary list of top 70 children's books

22, and it worries me that I swept the "weird and wonderful" category.

So many good books not published by Puffin...

Author:  Nightwing [ Thu May 13, 2010 9:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Puffin's 70th anniversary list of top 70 children's books

It makes me sad that these are almost entirely books written by white authors about white characters - which is not to say these aren't good books, but surely a little diversity wouldn't go amiss.

Author:  Emma A [ Fri May 14, 2010 11:13 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Puffin's 70th anniversary list of top 70 children's books

Nightwing wrote:
It makes me sad that these are almost entirely books written by white authors about white characters - which is not to say these aren't good books, but surely a little diversity wouldn't go amiss.

Unfortunately that reflects the Puffin list - most of their writers were white (and predominantly British, too). When you're considering a list based on 70 years of publishing, unless you bias the list for more recent, inclusive writers and books, the majority would have been written for the predominantly white readership of that list.

Author:  Nightwing [ Sun May 16, 2010 9:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Puffin's 70th anniversary list of top 70 children's books

Emma A wrote:
When you're considering a list based on 70 years of publishing, unless you bias the list for more recent, inclusive writers and books, the majority would have been written for the predominantly white readership of that list.


Oh definitely, except that I thought there were an fair few contemporary authors on the list - more than I'd expect to see, actually! - which is why I made the comment.

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