Here’s a poser: the first Harry Potter novel wasn’t published until June 1997, but by July 1999 - when the third in the sequence, The Prisoner of Azkaban, was released - JK Rowling’s wizarding series was making muggles of everyone who ever doubted it (a roll of dishonour that included several publishers and a fair few early critics).
The impact of the books was undeniably swift, global and galvanising, but can they – as the actor and writer Brandon Robshaw asserts in a blog over on our children’s books website - be the defining books of the 1990s, given how late in the decade they came into being?
Literary judgments are always subjective but my own memory of the 1990s is that the towering achievement was Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, of which the first two instalments were published in 1995 and 1997.
Here’s Robshaw’s selection of books that defined their decade. Do you agree with his choices? If not, what would your alternatives be?
The 1950s
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
The 1960s
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
The 1970s
Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry by Mildred D Taylor
The 1980s
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, by Sue Townsend
The 1990s
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling
The Noughties
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
Here are some suggestions from Twitter:
@GdnChildrensBks @BrandonRobshaw Agree with a number of the choices, but for me the 60s has to be the outstanding Paddington #Hardstare
— david pearce (@davidgpearce) April 29, 2015
And feel free to add suggestions from earlier decades as Kathryn Aalto has done.
1920s - an era of hardened WWI survivors reaching peaks & poles: Christopher Robin has his own Expotitions! @GuardianBooks @GdnChildrensBks
— Kathryn Aalto (@kathrynaalto) April 29, 2015
