15 Must Read Classic Children's Authors

We're just starting to read chapter books.

But as we've only just got started it's a bit hit and miss what works and what doesn't.

Lots of my old books are on our shelves and are pulled out and requested - some we have to give up after a few pages and other completely surprising ones really fly and chapter after chapter is demanded until it is way, way, way past bedtime.

This has got me thinking about the magic ingredients that make children's books last.

Our first chapter book was Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox- which I can so recommend - and I think it has five magic ingredients:

Attractive heroes
Exciting narrative
An adult free - or at least human adult free - space into which the heroes can escape
Clear sentence structure
Incredibly taut story line

But at the moment for a very young reader, it's clear sentence structure and taut story line that is the killer difference between what we read and what we stop.

There are some absolutely lovely books, such as Little Grey Rabbit by Alison Uttley,which would seem great for under fives - and which I know we will come back to - but at the moment only usually work with painful adhoc editing. The language just isn't taut enough.

Whilst The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis- which I thought was far, far, far too old and I only started under duress - was the most enormous hit. Even though there may be long words, Lewis writes with such amazing economy that young children don't have to filter out lots of baggage to follow the adventure.

Re-reading Lewis - what a treat! - got me rummaging through my other old English - or rather British - classics to come up with a list of other must reads both for now and later.

This is a list of 15 must read British children's authors that are still going strong from before the 1950s, with my thoughts below on what makes them a classic and roughly when you can start reading them.

I would love to hear your thoughts and what you would add to, take off the list.

Beatrix Potter

Some people are a little wary of the Beatrix Potter originals - not liking the violence or the long words.

And yes Peter's father does end up in Mrs McGregor's pie, Tabitha Twitchit whips Tom Kitten and the dogs eat Jemima's eggs but - without in anyway advocating any of these things - the vast majority of children are not in any way upset by this.

And yes she does use long words but young children love learning new words - how wonderful a word is soporific! - and her sentence structure is so sharp that they can make sense of these new words.

The only thing to watch out for with Beatrix Potter is that the stories are of varying complexity. Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, the Flospy Bunnies, Mrs Tittlemouse, Tom Kitten, Jeremy Fisher and Mrs Tiggywinkle are great ones to start with. Whilst The Tailor of Gloucester and Pigling Bland for example, are marvellous, but very long.

C. S. Lewis

Lucy's first steps through the wardrobe and into Narnia are still magical all those years after I first read them.

I really do think C. S. Lewis has it all, a whole series of attractive child characters, exciting narrative with lots of twists and turns and an amazing ability to conjure up images of completely different worlds - particularly in Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Magician's Nephew.

And critically, he creates worlds in which the children have adventures completely free of any adult supervision - they are the ultimate escape from annoying parents!

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the place to start, and is much shorter and simpler than the others so young children who enjoy it may not be ready for the others.

Joyce Lankester Brisley

Joyce Lankester Brisley is best known for the Milly Molly Mandy short story series. Set in a very small English village in the 1920s nothing very much - to be honest - happens. But my mum loved them, (my dad confesses to borrowing his sisters's), I loved them and now my daughter loves them. They are still being reprinted 90 years after they were first published.

Milly Molly Mandy's "adventures" are very simple compared with those of Narnia - blackberrying, sledging, finding a hedgehog, going to a party, minding the shop - but Joyce Lankester Brisley like C.S. Lewis can tell a complete story in very few words.

Although Milly Molly Mandy's family play a big part in the story, Milly Molly Mandy and her friends have incredible freedom to roam the village and surrounding countryside and most of their adventures take place without the grown ups around.

They are enjoyable reading for 6 and 7 year olds but if you've got an under-5 who wants more complicated stories, I can definitely recommend them.

Ursula Moray Williams

Oh how we cried at Gobbolino when we were children - my mum always wanted to stop because we were weeping so much but we absolutely insisted that she went on!

Ursula Moray Williams wrote Gobbolino and her other great classic the Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse were written in the late 1930s and early 40s. Both stories are heart rending as Gobbolino and the little wooden horse go through whole series of calamities in which they are exposed to much cruelty and suffering.

Although, the sadness of the stories may at times see overwhelming, it is - plus the author's deft story telling - what attracts children to the books. They can use the stories to safely explore their own fears.

Alison Uttley

Alison Uttleywrote the first in her Little Grey Rabbit series in the 1920s and was still writing them in the 1970s. They are exquisitely illustrated stories of Little Grey Rabbit and her friends including Squirrel, Hare and the adorable little Fuzzypeg the Hedgehog.

The stories focus on everyday activities, e.g. going to school, washing day, having a party, and key seasonal events in the British calendar, e.g. bonfire night, which are repeatedly turned on their head by the antics of Hare, Fuzzypeg in a muddle and conflicts with Rat, Owl and the Weasles.

Each book is a single story but the writing is quite dense so the stories work out much longer than chapters in say Milly Molly Mandy or the original Thomas the Tank Engine stories and younger children may struggle to concentrate all the way through.

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote and published children's stories from the 1870s to the 1920s including her great classics Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, The Lost Prince and The Secret Garden.

All of them involve children triumphing - primarily by their own means independent of the adults in the story - over suffering and hardship.

Hodgson Burnett does not hold back in her portrayal of this hardship. In the opening chapter of the beautifully written Secret Garden, Mary is left alone in her house in India as everyone around dies of cholera!

But children - or at least the 6 and overs who the books are most suitable for - really seem to identify with this suffering and the journey of the hero to conquer it.

E Nesbit

Edith Nesbit was writing at the same time as Frances Hodgson Burnett and some of her stories, similarly portray children having to cope with very harsh realities of life - The Railway Children starts with the children's father being arrested and sent to prison!

However, in Nesbit's books - as in C. S. Lewis who she influenced - it is a group of children rather than an individual child who triumphs, and within the children's adventures she brilliantly captures all the quarrels and bickering that are such a part of childhood.

In some of her books - Five Children and It, The Pheonix and the Carpet, The Enchanted Castle - she also ventures into fantasy.

I think Nesbit's books are for 6 and up.

Mary Norton

Mary Nortonwrote The Borrowers and Bed Knobs and Broomsticks series in the 1940s and 50s. In the Borrowers she taps - in a strange way like C. S. Lewis- into the attraction to children of a parallel world of adventures that exists side by side with our own sometimes dull domestic lives.

The added attraction for children is that they identify both with Arriety and her tiny family who live under the floorboards and with the dastardly "human beans" who cause so many problems for Arriety.

Norton like Nesbit and Burnett is suitable for 6 and up.

Richmal Crompton

Richmal Crompton'scalamitous hero William Brown has been going strong since the 1920s.

The stories - like Milly Molly Mandy's - are set in a small English village, but a village which is daily transformed by the pure power of William's wondrous imagination into a world of pirates, robbers, space travel and warfare with disastrous consequences for his family and the rest of the village.

William is the great standard bearer for childhood freedom - he never really intends for things to go wrong; he is just incapable of recognising or accepting the logic and constraints of the adult world.

Crompton like Joyce Lankester Brisleyis the complete master of the short story and packs a lot into a few pages but the humour in William works at a slightly older level so they are less accessible to younger children.

Rev W Awdry

Who doesn't like Thomas the Tank Engine? A character so strong and attractive to young children that since his first appearance in 1946 he has taken on a whole existence independent of the books.

But please, please, please read Rev W. Awdry'soriginals and not the adaptations with their simplistic pictures and dull language. Yes the pictures are smaller but they are beautiful. And yes the language appears more complex but, because of it's quality, I think it's much more accessible.

How much better for children to be read great English from an early age rather than fobbed off with something second rate.

A A Milne

Winnie the Pooh like Thomas needs no introduction. He is known and loved by children who have never read A A Milne'sstories but do read them and do, do, do read A A Milne'stwo poetry collections.

The Pooh stories have a simple absurdist humour that young children love because they can recognise for themselves - in advance of Pooh - that he is getting it adorably "wrong".

Pooh is a wonderful creation but I think A A Milne'sbest writing is in his poems When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. Milne constantly plays with form and rhyming patterns but all the poems have amazing rhythm that makes them accessible to very young children and a great way to lull children to sleep!

George MacDonald

I can vividly remember the first time I read The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald.We were on holiday and I was terrified by the goblins but I read and read and read until long after I should have been asleep.

Written in 1872, MacDonald's classic was a massive influence on many of the other writer's in this list. It taps into traditional fairy story themes and dream motifs - strange stair cases, rooms that come and go - but what made it so original was the quality of the writing.

MacDonald gave children the respect they deserve and carefully wrote great literature specifically for them. It is scary but full of magic images that will stay with you for ever - treat your children and yourself.

Kenneth Grahame

Having urged you to only read the Thomas the Tank Engine originals, I am doing the opposite for Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows.

The characters and the stories are wonderfully attractive to children even though these animals are very clearly adults. There's a production of Wind in the Willows every year in our local park which even 2 and 3 year olds "get" and love.

But I think it is a very dense read for children and some of the mysticism - for example, when the young otter goes missing - is amazingly beautiful for adults but unpenetrable to readers under 11.

My best advice would be to read - and enjoy - it yourself and then tell your own versions of the stories to your children. And if you do get a chance to see it at the theatre, do go and see it.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island is another one for older children. It is a great rip-roaring adventure but also a first rites of passage story about older children having to recognise the complexities and flaws of adults they care about deeply.

Personally, I think Stevenson's writing can be a bit erratic and flabby at times so reading it aloud, even to children who could read it themselves, can really release the wonderful power of the story and the characters without children getting bogged down in some of the language.

Arthur Ransome

I know not everyone is a fan of Arthur Ransome but personally I think he definitely belongs in this list. Ransome's books are a celebration of firstly, the dynamics between different families or "gangs", secondly, of children's imaginations - in the early books the children invent most of the adventures themselves - and finally, and I think most uniquely and significantly of the outdoors.

Ransome captures in great detail the beauty of both the hilly Lake District and the flat marshes of East Anglia and enthralls children just as much with this as with his adventures.

As with all the authors in this list Ransome shows great respect for children. These authors never "dumb" down - they treat children as intelligent readers who will enjoy great writing. The fact that all these authors are still going strong today, proves so well, that children do.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this list and anyone else you would include and if you've got any great posts on reading do add them to the link below:

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