The Best Children's Books of All Time

I recently came across this list of the 15 best children's books of all time, published in the Telegraph. I thought that title was a surprisingly definite one! Who decided these were the best of all time? That aside, the ones in their list are:

1. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
2. The Hobbit (JRR Tolkein)
3. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (CS Lewis)
4. Charlotte's Webb (EB White)
5. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
6. Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren)
7. Emil and the Detectives (Erich Kastner)
8. James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl)
9. Winnie the Pooh (AA Milne)
10. A Little Princess (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
11. The Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling)
12. Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Jules Verne)
13. The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Graham)
14. The Doll People (Ann M Martin and Laura Godwin)
15. The Child That Books Built (Francis Spufford)

I have read all of these except Emil and the Detectives, The Doll People and The Child That Books Built ( which apparently isn't actually a children's book but "a guide on how to grow into reading; and it’s a wonderfully eloquent take on how growing up happens unexpectedly"). I also didn't realise Journey to the Centre of the Earth was a children's book when I read it as a teenager, but there you are!

Would you add anything to this list? I was surprised Harry Potter wasn't on there (although it was in their list of contenders at the end of the article). I couldn't pick a favourite from the list (could you?) but all the ones I've read fill me with a sense of nostalgia, that I also get from certain other titles. So if I was to cut out the three I haven't read, plus Jules Verne, I think I would replace them with:

1. Tom's Midnight Garden (Philippa Pearce)
2. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
3. Anne of Green Gables (LM Montgomery)
4. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

What are your top children's books of all time? Are there any children's classics you couldn't get on with?

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