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When I first saw that BBC Culture were running a poll to choose the 100 Greatest Children’s Books, my first reaction was trepidation. I feared it would be a politically correct fiesta. No

Roald Dahl, no JK Rowling. I couldn’t have been more wrong. _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory _(1964), _Matilda _(1988) and _Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone_ (1997) all made the

top Twenty. Better still, so did many classics: _Alice in Wonderland _(2nd), _The Little Prince _(4th), _The Hobbit _(5th), _Winnie-the-Pooh_ (8th), _Charlotte’s Web _(9th). What is

extraordinary is how British (sic) and old-fashioned the Top 20 is. It’s an interesting mix of 19th century classics (five written between 1827-80) and mid-20th century (ten written between

1937-73). The only surprise is how few are from the past 35 years: just four published since my oldest child was born in 1987. Only fourteen books published this century made it into the top

100. Someone said, “Considered together they reveal how storytelling for children is evolving in exciting ways.” Actually, it doesn’t. What it might reveal is how old the judges are. Or,

perhaps, when you have such a geographical mix of judges, some felt they should choose a few English classics they knew from when they were young amidst the titles they chose from their own

country. And why are there so many British titles? Is it because, from _Alice _and _Treasure Island _to King Rollo and the Ahlbergs, the British write the best children’s stories for all

ages? Perhaps. More likely, it helps if nearly fifty judges are British. The countries with the next largest number of judges included quite a few Anglophone nations: the US (16), Canada

(6), Ireland and Australia (4 each). It’s all very well having a French judge choose Tintin and Asterix books, but there were only two French judges and three Germans, two Russian and one

Chinese. Inevitably, there was only one Israeli judge. This was the BBC after all. On the other hand, there were only two Palestinian judges. The mix of female and male authors and

characters could have been worse. Seven women authors (Astrid Lindgren, LM Montgomery, JK Rowling, Susan Cooper, Louisa May Alcott, Johanna Spyri, Margaret Wise Brown). I would have chosen

Joan Aiken and Esther Forbes’s _Johnny Tremain_, and my daughters might have chosen Jacqueline Wilson and Judith Kerr, but it’s a pretty good list. As for the female characters: Alice, Pippi

Longstocking, Matilda, Anne of Green Gables, the March sisters from _Little Women_, Heidi (and what about Hermione from JK Rowling’s books and Charlotte from _Charlotte’s Web_?) were

evidently popular choices among the judges. The obvious surprise is how white the selection is. Shaun Tan, the son of a Malaysian-Chinese father and an Irish-Australian mother, is the only

author of mixed parentage in the top 20. Otherwise, much of this list could have been compiled in the 1950s. As for the characters, there are more witches, wizards and hobbits in the top

Twenty than there are black or Asian characters. Also surprising is how few classics there are from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Almost no one voted for _Gulliver’s Travels_,

_Robinson Crusoe _or Huckleberry Finn. _Treasure Island _got one vote, _Kidnapped _two. _The Wind in the Willows, _Peter Pan and Frances Hodgson Burnett are just too Edwardian, it seems.

More curious, perhaps, is the consensus among the judges that the real golden age was the mid-20th century, the heyday of CS Lewis, Tolkien, _Pippi Longstocking_, _Charlotte’s Web _and

Maurice Sendak’s _Where the Wild Things Are _(the overall winner). I found this curious. Growing up in the 1960s and early 1970s, I thought it was a pretty grim period for children’s books,

at any rate compared to Long John Silver, _The Three Musketeers_, Jekyll and Hyde, and, when I was younger, the gentler pastoral world of Ratty and Mole and Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. By

comparison, my family and I loved the late 20th century golden age of _Meg and Mog _(1972), _Each Peach Pear Plum _(1978) and _The Jolly Postman _(1986), David McKee’s books about King Rollo

and Elmer, the deeply moving Michael Rosen book, _Carrying the Elephant: A Memoir of Love and Loss_ (2002) and John Burningham’s _Granpa _(1984). Then when they were older: Jacqueline

Wilson’s _Tracy Beaker _books (1991-2019), David Almond’s _Skellig _(1998), Lemony Snicket, _A Series of Unfortunate Events _(1999-2006), Mark Haddon’s _The Curious Incident of the Dog in

the Night-Time_ (2003) and, of course, JK Rowling and Philip Pullman, which changed everything. Two final personal regrets. First, where are the poets? No Edward Lear or Michael Rosen, no

Ahlbergs or Dr. Seuss, no _Gargling with Jelly _or Sandra Boynton (_Moo, Baa, La La La_). And, second, what about the vanished and doubtless very incorrect world of Dr. Dolittle, Babar the

Elephant, Biggles and Jennings? All gone. As remote as Tutankhamun. Gone, along with all the pirates, knights and musketeers. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s

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