Children’s Laureates choose favourite books

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Children’s Laureateship, the five authors who have held the post reveal their seven favourite children’s books. Quentin Blake, Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Rosen made their selections for Waterstone’s.

Interestingly, bestsellers such as J. K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, Roald Dahl, Beatrix Potter and A. A. Milne were not among the chosen authors. Only five of the 35 books selected were published in the past 20 years; the post popular decade was the thirties, with seven books on the list from that era.

Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse, says that Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories ‘gave me a love of story but also of the music in words’, and that Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island showed him how to write with ‘huge descriptive power and pace’.

All of Jacqueline Wilson’s choices were published between 1868 and 1937. She says: ‘I would love to be Mary Poppins—admired by everyone, totally in control, never turning a hair even when flying through the air with her carpet bag and parrot-headed umbrella.’ She also identified with Jo in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, ‘the tomboy sister who is desperate to be a writer’.

The idea for the Children’s Laureateship emerged from a conversation between Ted Hughes, then the Poet Laureate, and Michael Morpurgo. It honours the writer’s achievement and promotes children’s literature at a time when many writers fear that educational focus on testing is undermining storytelling in schools.

Quentin Blake was the first Children’s Laureate. The successor to Michael Rosen, the current incumbent, will be announced on June 9.

Country Life asked top politicians, writers and celebrities which books every child should read. To find out their choices, click here.

Favourite children’s books Quentin Blake Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain, Edward Ardizzone Queenie the Bantam, Bob Graham The Box of Delights, John Masefield Rose Blanche, Ian McEwan and Roberto Innocenti Five Children and It, E. Nesbit Snow White, Josephine Poole Stuart Little, E. B. White

Jacqueline Wilson Little Women, Louisa May Alcott A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett What Katy Did, Susan Coolidge The Family from One End Street, Eve Garnett The Railway Children, E. Nesbit Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfield Mary Poppins, P. L. Travers

Michael Morpurgo Five Go to Smuggler’s Top, Enid Blyton Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, Virginia Lee Burton Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling A Book of Nonsense, Edward Lear Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson The Happy Prince, Oscar Wilde

Anne Fine The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken Absolute Zero, Helen Cresswell Just William, Richmal Crompton Journey to the River Sea, Eva Ibbotson Lavender’s Blue, Kathleen Lines A Child’s Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson The Sword in the Stone, T. H. White

Michael Rosen Clown, Quentin Blake The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank Emil and the Detectives, Erich Kästner Not Now, Bernard, David McKee Fairy Tales, Terry Jones Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear, Andy Stanton Daz 4 Zoe, Robert Swindells