My Top 20 Classic Children's Books

In the last couple of months of 2011 I had grand ambitions to read ten children’s classics by the end of the year. Well surprise, it didn’t happen. Kind of picked the busiest months. And also in those few months I was also working on something a little closer to home – more on that in the next few posts.

Nevertheless, it’s still something I want to do, and so have changed it slightly – now it’s going to be my Top 20 classic children's books, which I will read (well, re-read really) and blog about. I’m excited about this because these books will be my absolute favourite children’s books – the ones that moved me so indescribably, that inspired me, the ones that I consider the greatest books in children’s literature. These are the ones that I buy in gorgeous hard copy editions and pick them up and coo at them (maybe not really ... perhaps just a little) and I can’t wait to share my thoughts on them.

For the record, the three books I started to review last year were The Graveyard Book, Journey to the River Sea and The Neverending Story.

Some of my favourite children’s books I have already reviewed on Book Grotto, so I will begin the countdown with them. (The Countdown will not be in order of favourites, it will really just be as I read and post about the books). And of course I would love to hear everyone else's thoughts on their favourite children's books as well.

So without further ado:

Number 20:  Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

Number 19:  The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

Number 18:  Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

Number 17:  The Toymaker by Jeremy de Quidt

And coming in the next few days:

Number 16: The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber

My Picks for 2011

My picks for 2011’s best reads – as always, because at least two thirds of my reading is backlist, the books are selected from everything I read this year, not just released in 2011. You can find reviews for all these books in the ‘Books I’ve Reviewed’ list to the left of screen.

Best wishes for all in 2012. I hope the importance of books continues to be celebrated, and I hope you all read a book that just worms its way into your heart. I also hope to shortly have good news of my own. Here’s to 2012 – Australia’s National Year of Reading.

BEST KIDS BOOK READ IN 2011:

The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende & The Night Fairy, by Laura Amy Schlitz

The Neverending Story is a children’s classic, which once you’ve read it, you know why it’s so. There is such imagination here, magic that never ends and is constantly surprising, a moral tale that’s never overdone, and lastly, a fabulous message about the importance of books. The Night Fairy, a few years old now, looks and reads like a new children’s classic and has a wonderfully spunky central character and loads of charm.

BEST YA BOOK READ IN 2011:

Good Oil, by Laura Buzo & Graffiti Moon, by Cath Crowley

When contemporary Aussie YA gets it right, it really gets it right. Both books were funny and true, with memorable main characters and great writing. Good Oil is a straightforward contemporary YA story, with dialogue and scenes as real as they come, while Graffiti Moon has a lovely touch of whimsy that perfectly captures the kind of night it describes. But where these books really get you is

with the emotional punch.

BEST KIDS SERIES READ IN 2011:

Wildwood, by Colin Meloy & Tales from the Tower, edited by Isobelle Carmody and Nan McNab

Wildwood was, I feel, just everything a middle grade kids adventure book should be. Tales from the Tower (Wilful Eye and Wicked Wood) was just a great idea well executed, and showcased some of Australia’s best YA and children’s writers.

BEST WRITING:

Tantony, by Ananda Braxton-Smith

Her books may not be for everyone, and they may not be easy, but the beauty she can create with words is outstanding – the weird, unusual and other becomes just gorgeous in Braxton-Smith’s hands. The Mourning Emporium too, just for the sheer joy Michelle Lovric takes in story and words and dialect.

BEST DISCOVERY:

Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett

Not YA, but this little story set on Tasmania’s coast really got to me in the best kind of way.

MOST PLEASANT SURPRISE:

When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead

I was wary of the hype but this book was a delight to read, and told with such affection and power.

I CAN'T BELIEVE I DIDN'T READ UNTIL NOW:

 The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende

MOST UNPUTADOWNABLE:

Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley & Tantony by Ananda Braxton-Smith

BEST CHARACTER:

Martha in Me and Mr Booker by Cory Taylor.  She is a walking wisecrack and I love it.

FAV COVER:

The Mourning Emporium, by Michelle Lovric & Tales from the Tower (both books)

MOST ANTICIPATED READING FOR 2012:

Night Beach, by Kirsty Eagar & Talina in the Tower by Michelle Lovric

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

First published in German, 1979

What an important, amazing and imaginative book The Neverending Story is. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book that can balance such magic and imagination with such insight and perception into the human psyche and the real world, and have the two inform understanding of the other. And then, above all, to do it within the framing device of the central character literally stepping into a book that teaches him all these things, and at the same time relies on him to keep creating the stories within. So clever, and so much fun.

I have read Momo by Michael Ende, and wasn’t such a fan – it was just a little too preachy and twee for me. The Neverending Story has a similar sort of intellectual whimsy, but I found I could stomach it better. Perhaps because the over-arching message is quite beautiful, and the way the central figures, Bastian and Atreyu, discover these things is through exposure to such wonderful things and creatures, whose beauty and magic helps them realise very human things like courage and individualism and selflessness and my personal favourite, imagination. When the fantastical comes to reflect and impact on the real, this is my kind of story.

To begin with I found The Neverending Story a little fussy – there was so much going on, and I wasn’t quite feeling the writing style (especially the parts told wholly in italics!), and there were so many strange creatures coming and going that I had to keep reading back to keep up. But as soon as Cairon the centaur went to find Atreyu, then I got swept up in his quest and all the fabulous lands Ende takes us to and the even-more fabulous creatures he has us meet. And I also didn’t mind Ende’s plot device of ‘but that’s another story and shall be told another time’ – this reinforces the idea of the book living on long after we close the pages (the neverending story), of wonderful things still to discover and stories to tell.

The Neverending Story has a lot of colour and vibrancy. It seems Ende’s imagination never runs out. The places we go to are not the same old places we might find in a fantasy book (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but just marvels of strangeness and wonder. In this way, The Neverending Story reminds me of The Phantom Tollbooth. We go from the magnificent, like the Sphinxes guarding the three gates, to the spectacularly strange and creepy, like Spook City, to long ladders formed out of letters of the alphabet, to the beauty of Perilin, the Night Forest. And then all the creatures we discover inbetween – it never ends, and it never feels like too much. One of my favourites was the idea that forgotten dreams fall out of a person’s sleep and into the earth where they are mined, and collected, waiting for the moment when a person needs them again. I love it when an author  can take something from the human world that we don’t really think about much, and turn it into something entirely new and full of meaning.

This book also has a lot of heart. It feels like Ende really did have a lot to say about the power of the book and of the imagination, and a way of making you believe it yourself. The Neverending Story is also full of themes, but the big ones concern memory and choice, power and compassion. I wasn’t such a fan of Bastian in the real world (I found those scenes just a little too sentimental), but in Fantastica his story is powerful and engaging.

And this book also has much sadness, which I love. I love the tragically beautiful in books and movies. I love when characters come to an end that isn’t wholly sad, but certainly bittersweet. This, I find, is when the worlds and creatures authors create come the closest to real life.

And so I loved Morla, who has lived so long she finds the world ‘empty and aimless’, who knows so much that ‘nothing really matters anymore, because it’s all the same’. And I loved the Spook City ghosts who leapt into the nothing because they have given up hope and become weak. And Gmork, the bitter old werewolf.  And the City of Old Emperors, whose inhabitants have used up all their memories and so wander around aimlessly, because ‘without a past they can’t have a future, and they can never change so nothing changes for them’. What a sad, beautiful idea. And of course Dame Eyola, who waits so long for Bastian and then gives him all of her love and affection so that all her vibrancy wilts and she becomes like a ‘black, dead tree’.

I have seen The Neverending Story film of course, but I am so glad I’ve now read the book. I did like the first half (the movie half) better for adventure and excitement, but I found that the second half really reinforced the thematic material, and was just as important in its own right. A wonderful book that should not be forgotten, because in every way it reinforces the idea of what a book is really about.