BBC Culture did a survey of critics from around the world about what their favorite children’s book for under ten-year-olds is. The list started at over 150 titles, but was trimmed down to a top 21. Here are the books in order:

 

1. Charlotte’s Web by EB White

2. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis

3. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

4. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

5. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

6. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

7. Winnie-the-Pooh by AA Milne

8. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

9. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

10. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

11. The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

12. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

13. From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler by EL Koenigsburg

14. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

15. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman

16. Matilda by Roald Dahl

17. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

18. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

19. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

20. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

21. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

 

Wow, the list certainly skews white and either American or British. I can think of many titles I would love to have seen there, and some that I would remove immediately, like #20.  Ugh.