The 27 most important writers of all time
Why? Because they all wrote children's books and inspired millions of us to fall in love with words. As chosen by Forthwrite friends and followers for World Book Day
Dressing up for World Book Day: yes, it’s a thing
Happy World Book Day! Normally, I’d have spent the past 24 hours panicking and cobbling together World Book Day outfits. Not this year (thanks, Covid).
My biggest World Book Day failure? My son, Finn, was in nursery. We were walking to school together when he enquired in his lovely toddler voice, ‘Mummy, why are all the other children dressed up?’
It was a fair question. A procession of characters from children’s books was marching down our street. We sprinted back home, threw Finn’s favourite dinosaur outfit on him and added a pair of his pants over the top. If you don’t see the genius in this, you haven’t read Claire Freedman’s Dinosaurs Love Underpants.
By last year, I, a veteran of seven WBDs, nailed it: Finn was The Wizard of Oz’s Tin Man and my daughter, Zeffie, was Gangsta Granny. We put a proper amount of effort in, visiting DIY and charity shops weeks beforehand.
My favourite part of the process is always asking them who they want to be (within reason) and watching them trawl through books revisiting characters, many of whom they have loved since they were tiny.
Recently we at Forthwrite asked who was the first author you really loved? The results of our survey are now in.
They are proof that the characters we meet and love in childhood stay with us for a lifetime. It’s such a genuinely inspiring list of authors, I feel rather devastated that I didn’t follow the advice I received from my teacher at age eight to stop reading Enid Blyton and nothing else. Many on this list I haven’t read, and many others are forgotten favourites.
It’s never too late, though. For as C S Lewis wrote to his Godchild Lucy Barfield in his dedication to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:
I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realised that girls grow quicker than books. As a result, you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
Lucy Barfield: there was also a Lucy in the book…
During the course of compiling this, I’ve put dozens of books into my Waterstone’s basket as presents for various children in my life – and for myself.
Here are the first literary loves of Forthwrite community.
For early readers:
Elisabeth Beresford and The Wombles. As voted for by David Mayo, who adds, ‘always remember who you are.’ Always, David.
Allan Ahlberg, whose titles include the delightful Peepo and the poetry book Please Mrs Butler. Natasha Asher-Relf says, ‘I can still recite most of the title poem from Please Mrs Butler.’
Roger Hargreaves, and for Claire Bodanis, specifically Mr Tickle. ‘I insisted on choosing Mr Tickle as my bedtime story every night for months when I was three. The best bit is when he's gone to bed but fancies a snack and so reaches his arm all the way down the stairs and opens the biscuit tin.’
For readers 6-8:
According to Richard Bonner-Davies, his first literary loves were Michael Bond, closely followed by A A Milne. For Varun Sharma, it would be A A Milne first: ‘Endearing and enduring. Even today, the thought of a ‘bear of very little brain’ makes me smile.’
Andrew Brown, the son of two librarians, says our question triggers two words: Gumdrop and Hartwarp. I must confess, I’d never heard of either. Val Biro wrote the Gumdrop series about a vintage car (my son would have loved this) and the Second World War poet John Pudney wrote the Hartwarp series in the 1960s – out of print now. Andrew adds, ‘I've got vivid memories of my father reading them to me, making brilliant impersonations of klaxons and whistles’.
Richard Adams and Watership Down. ‘I read it with my mum, one page at a time each,’ recalls Lynda Fulford, ‘and I still remember the fear and excitement that Hazel, Big Wig and their gang conjured up in my seven-year-old head.’
According to Danny Herbert, the best and most beautiful children's book ever is Tove Jansson’s Moominland Midwinter. ‘Genius. I read it again recently and guess what? It even has eerie parallels, now, with lockdown.’
Mary O'Hara’s My Friend Flicka. Claire Bodanis’s second vote, but any list like this wouldn’t be complete without a pony tale.
For John Allert, it was Clive King’s Stig of the Dump. Which child could fail to be beguiled by the strange boy who wears a rabbit skin and speaks in grunts? John also fell for Australian author Colin Thiele’s Storm Boy about a boy and his pelican. Another one in the Waterstones’ basket.
Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in 1867 in the log cabin described in Little House in the Big Woods, before her family travelled by wagon across the Midwest to The Little House on the Prairie. It’s a story loved by Eleanor Hatfield. And although I did read the books, it was the TV adaptation of Little House that got me.
For readers 8-12:
Roald Dahl. As Rowena Roberts explains, ‘I remember reading The Twits for the first time and being delighted to discover irreverence.’
Enid Blyton. Whatever faults Enid had (and she had many), her name came up the most frequently. As Hannah Mather writes, ‘I so wanted to climb up the Faraway Tree and find another world at the top. The ability to inspire and imagine is a wonderful gift.’
Louise Fitzhugh wrote the classic children’s novel, Harriet the Spy back in 1964. It has sold over four million copies, and according to Louisa Clarke, Harriet remains a ‘role model for life’.
Frances Hodgson Burnett and The Little Princess. Deborah Saw thinks this is one of the best classic boarding school tales.
Noel Streatfield and Ballet Shoes. First published in 1936 and still beloved, especially by Audrey Anand.
Like Enid, Kenneth Grahame received many votes for his much-loved classic, The Wind in the Willows. The book was published in 1908. Every generation discovers it anew.
Diana Buttenshaw’s Pepito of Guadiaro. Huge kudos to Mike Longhurst for recommending this title, which may vanish without a trace if we’re not careful. Pepito is abandoned by his parents in the mountains in Andalucia, and is then rescued and raised by a donkey, a rabbit, a hare and a cat. The book is out of print and the last second-hand copy to be sold on Amazon was snapped up by a fan in New Zealand. The campaign to revive it starts here.
For readers 9+:
‘My first true book obsession was L M Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables’, recalls Joanna Newbury. Published in 1908, Anne of Green Gables was the Harry Potter of its time. It was initially rejected by every publisher, and then sold 19,000 in its first five months, while the cynical Mark Twain called Anne ‘the dearest and most lovable child in fiction’.
For Claire Miller and Angela Johnson, it was C.S. Lewis and his magical wardrobe, also a firm favourite of Forthwrite’s Mark Jones, who is writing a book following the Narnia trail through Britain and Ireland. ‘But if Lewis were contributing to this blog,’ writes Mark, ‘he would certainly want to single out the books that inspired him as a child – especially those of E Nesbit. The Railway Children is the best known of her works today. But for CSL the ‘It’ series paved the way to Narnia. She also wrote a story about a magic wardrobe’.
No beloved children’s author list would be complete without C S Lewis’s great friend, J R R Tolkien. As Andrew Brown says, ‘At the age of 12 I discovered Tolkien. It was a definitive moment.’
The Eagle of the Ninth novels by Rosemary Sutcliff, whose retellings of myths and legends were nominated by Deborah Saw (who also suggested the excellent The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aitken). Perfect for young history buffs.
Capt. W E Johns wrote 100 books chronicling Biggles' adventures in the First World War (when Biggles is 17), between the two wars, during the Second World War, and after. And as Alan Palmer says, “I loved Biggles!”
When Marnie Was There was the book that made Anna Hopwood fall for author Joan G Robinson. The tale of Anna who meets Marnie among the sand dunes, only to find out she isn’t all she seems. Now adapted as a film by the cult Studio Ghibli, as Anna says, ‘It’s one that really sticks in your memory’.
For 11+:
Judy Blume’s ‘Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret’, the coming-of-age story set in the 1970s, is the most-banned book on this list. But Jessica Rowntree tells us of the profound impact the book had on her, Aileen Powell declares ‘Judy Blume was the queen!’, while Clare Weatherill still has her copy of Tiger Eyes. If you happen to be a teen girl reading this in North Carolina, Are You There, God? is currently being made into a film and a casting call has gone out for extras…
Thirty years before Harry Potter, Ursula K. Le Guin was writing novels about a wizarding school in A Wizard of Earthsea. As Patrica A. explains, ‘Le Guin is such an amazing writer, who has influenced so many others.’ For Danny Herbert, his first literary love was also Le Guin, but for the second book in the Earthsea series, The Tombs of Atuan, which he is re-reading at the moment.
So, there you have the Forthwrite’s guide to the best children’s authors. There are a few obvious ones missing from the list (Dr Seuss anyone? What about poor old Mog the Forgetful Cat who first appeared in 1970? Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince?) And, of course, this list is generational and so we’re missing the incredible authors inspiring a new generation of readers today, including Julia Donaldson, Jeff Kinney, Onjali Q. Rauf, David Walliams, Anthony Horowitz and J.K. Rowling. We would love to hear your thoughts below on any others that might have been missed.
Let’s end (properly) with… Judy Blume on what books children should and shouldn’t read
Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.
What a great list! It brings back so many childhood memories and I've written a wonderfully inspiring list now of books to buy and borrow for my children - all based on this article! Thank you!
My Judy Bloom was "Cider with Rosie" by Laurie Lee and my son's book to read and re-read has been "Emil and the Detectives" - Emil another literary roll model like Harriet, I'm definitely going to be reading "Harriet the Spy"! Many thanks and happy reading, Ellen Mayes x