The Telegraph has a new article online which notes the Harry Potter series and its inclusion on a list of the Top 50 Children’s Books. The paper reports on a recent poll conducted by Booktrust, a charity promoting literacy for people of all ages, which asked 4,000 parents to choose the best children’s books of all time. The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, came in at number six, and was the only book by author J. K. Rowling to make the list. The article goes on to suggest that while the Harry Potter books were the fastest selling in history, parents seemed to ‘believe in the superiority of the books they enjoyed as children over modern stories.’ The top ten books on this list were:
1. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis
2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
3. Famous Five series, Enid Blyton
4. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
5. The BFG, Roald Dahl
6. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling
7. The Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
8. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
9. Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
10. The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson
The poll also found that four out of five parents spend an average of 22 minutes reading to their children each night and half began the bedtime reading when their child was six months old.
It’s funny that the book with the most ‘relationship’ stuff, stuff that might not be appropriate for very young children, was the only one that made the list. ;P
Am I the only one who finds it interesting that HBP-one of the weaker books in the series, imo-makes the list the same year the HBP movie is coming out?
I feel that book is really random one, but congratulations anyway, Jo!
I agree with Leggers. The sixth book is one book of the series in which I consider it to be very “adult” in content. The seventh book is my favorite, but that is very definitely adult. I would have picked Prisoner of Azkaban as her best “children” content book of the series. I always consider the first three “children books”, the fourth as the transitional, and the last three as the “adult books.”
And regarding the other choices, BFG should have been higher!
Wow, I’m so happy with the choice of the readers. It seems to me that Book 6 is often underestimated, although it is a brilliant book, very dramatic and very true from the psychological point of view. Still, I wouldn’t call it a purely children’s book, as it is rather dark and there are many subtleties that younger children may not get right. Anyway, the choice is great!!!
As for the rest of the books, I think that the poll cannot be applied to the international audience. I mean, “The very hungry caterpillar”? I’ve never heard about this book before…
Well -the first thing to say is that the voters were aged 16-60.
The Potter series is slowly getting the critical aclaim it richly deserves although here in Britain, it still gives journalists a thrill to be able to report a story from the angle that “Potter did not come first” -rather than simply on the merits.
Writing and publishing is -I KNOW -a very, very bitchy world.
I don’t know, I think it’s quite nice to see other traditional children’s authors represented who seem to have widely been abandoned in favour of Rowling and Pullman and whatnot - particularly in polls. Before reading HP, my childhood books were authors like Blyton and Carroll, and the problem with these polls is they tend to only ask kids - who simply don’t have as much a variety in reading as they did in a pre-HP world.
in short, appreciates the results. Rowling usually comes in the top three. This makes a nice change.
M Jones you are completely right. The British press just love it when HP fails to reach top spot. I read that in one of the British papers, and it couldn’t wait to let the reader know how Jo only had one of her books in the top 50. I thought get a grip. I wish I could point out to them, that Jo’s books prob outsold all the top 10 put together (not including hers of course :p)
My feeling also is that HP is a series of books (even more so than the Blyton’s Famous Five, Malory Towers and St Clares series) so I find it odd that it isn’t treated as a series like those. They should be included on the list as a group or not at all. It doesn’t do the series justice to include just one as though it is standalone.
Also, I have to say re Enid Blytin that the Famous Five is quite bland compared to her Barney Mysteries or Mysteries series. I have been re-reading her books recently, because I grew up with them too, and they really aren’t a patch on Rowling.
Most of those authors I completely agree should be on the list (of the ones I know) and JK deserves to be among them. As far as rank is concerned, though, I always find that very arbitrary and meaningless in these kinds of polls.
BUT MAJOR PLUS for me is that Phillip Pullman, who I LOATHE, isn’t on the list at all!!
"Well?" said Uncle Vernon, recalling Harry to his surroundings. "What now? Have they sentenced you to anything? Do your lot have the death penalty?" he added as a hopeful afterthought.
congrats jo!