Rising Above the Book-Banning Debate:

The 100 Best Children’s Books of All Time

Well-managed intellectual propaganda begins with the curation of children’s books. Educators understand that ideas formed in childhood, and especially ideas about how the world is and how it should be, tend to last forever, even if they are subjugated or sublimated by later education and experience.

So, when the BBC recently announced that they had polled 177 experts from 56 countries to find “the 100 greatest children’s books ever,” I was curious to see what they had been up to. (After all, I have five grandkids that are or will be learning to read.)

Introducing the project, the BBC said the following:

“Recently… there’s been the furor over the rewriting of Roald Dahl’s novels for modern sensibilities – and more generally, the widespread concern over the growing movement in the US towards banning children’s books, including many dealing with racial and LGBTQ+ themes. All in all, then, it felt like the right time to do our bit to both give children’s literature its due and consider what has made and continues to make great children’s writing. And so, in order to do that, we have decided to ask many experts a very simple question: What is the greatest children’s book of all time?”

I looked at the list they came up with, and was pleased to see that 80% of the books were written before 1950 and none of them seemed to have a particularly political agenda. Click here to see the list.

A hundred children’s books is probably too many to aim for in your home library – in most home libraries. But 20 is a good starting number. So, to help you cull the list, here – also from the BBC – are short summaries of their top 20.