What cheering news, to discover this morning that EB White's heart-wrenching, wonderful story of a spider and a pig, Charlotte's Web, has topped a US list of the best 100 children's books, edging out more modern fare from JK Rowling and Suzanne Collins. The list, compiled by Parent & Child Magazine editors after 500 titles were suggested by literacy experts and "mum bloggers" is an eclectic mix of old and new, books for little kids and older children – and best of all, nothing from Stephenie Meyer.
White's novel about Charlotte A Cavatica "seemed to have touched the most readers", said the magazine, so it pipped the classic illustrated bedtime story Goodnight Moon to the No 1 spot. I'm intrigued and delighted to see Madeleine L'Engle's fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time in third, a book I adore, and pleased the Parent & Child team didn't feel the need to flood their list with Harry Potters, settling instead for just the first novel in the series, in sixth place. Collins's bestselling dystopian young adult title The Hunger Games comes in 33rd – the novel is published by Scholastic, which also publishes Parent & Child magazine and has 14 titles on the list, but the magazine's editor says that judges looked at the books, not their publishers.
It's an American list, so there's lots of US titles I know only vaguely, if at all, but I'm pleased to see Anne of Green Gables riding high (Gilbert was one of my first literary crushes). Ditto to The Phantom Tollbooth (although shouldn't it be higher than 23rd? Given that it is one of the best children's books ever?) and to Judy Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, an essential read for teenage girls, I'd say. I'd also forgotten entirely about Robert C O'Brien's Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which comes in 78th, and will be tracking down a copy for a re-read as soon as possible.
But part of the fun in these book-ranking projects is complaining about what was missed out, so – if we ignore the Brits and focus on the Americans – where is Laura Ingalls Wilder? Where's Tom Sawyer? The Wizard of Oz? Z for Zachariah? The list, says Nick Friedman, the magazine's editor in chief, is aimed at "generating controversy and conversation", and obviously it isn't possible to include everything. But does The Adventures of Captain Underpants ("You can't have a greatest kids' books list without some kind of underpants," says the magazine) really trump the Little House books? And Matilda is only 41st? I'm not so sure.
