BookTrust's 100 Best Books for Children Books

BookTrust is the UK's largest children's reading charity, best known for putting free books into the hands of babies and young families. In 2021 it published the 100 Best Books for Children: one hundred titles spanning ages 0 to 14, drawn from the previous hundred years of children's publishing and chosen by a panel that included librarian Jake Hope, The Times children's books editor Nicolette Jones, authors Catherine Johnson and Smriti Halls, illustrator James Mayhew, and critic Julia Eccleshare.

It is a standing list rather than an annual prize, and its constraints are what make it useful. Broadly one book is allowed per author or illustrator — only Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury appear twice — so no single name or series takes over. Nothing first published more than a century before the list was assembled was eligible, which ruled out Alice in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows. The picks are grouped in narrow age bands from birth through fourteen, and the panel weighted the selection toward a wider range of authors, illustrators and characters than a classics list usually carries.

Read straight through, it works as a map of the modern British children's canon, and a way to see which names that every British parent knows never became household names in the United States.

Information from BookTrust.