QUILLBLOG

Unknown kids’ classics

While announcing the shortlist for the annual U.K.-based Carnegie Medal for children’s writing this week, the organizers also released a list of their top ten favorite titles of all time. According to an article in The Guardian, the list is intended to stimulate the public to vote online – in a poll to celebrate the Carnegie’s 70th birthday – for the ultimate “Carnegie of Carnegies”: a single all-time winner to be announced on June 21.

Because the top ten list is comprised only of previous Carnegie winners, there are a lot of esteemed classics that were ineligible. Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for instance, as well as Tolkien’s The Hobbit, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, and Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three. Also, because the prize only goes back to 1936, beloved older English works like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and E. Nesbit’s The Railway Children have had to be left off, too.

Consequently, Quillblog has to confess that except for Mary Norton’s The Borrowers and Philip Pullman’s relatively recent Northern Lights, we haven’t heard of a single title on the list. Maybe that’s just our narrow Canadian-mindedness, though. If anyone else has read one of ‘em, please feel free to post a review… (And someone has to explain to us why Richard Adams’ fricking awesome Carnegie-winner Watership Down wasn’t included! Scandalous!)