Children’s Books and Literature
Children’s Literature & Classic Fairy Tales
This literature quiz has ten easy questions about literature for children and teenagers.
There is no single or widely used definition of children’s literature. It spans many works, including fairy tales, fables, fiction, poetry, or drama intended for and used by children and young people.
A Little Pretty Pocket-Book is often considered the first modern children’s book since it was the first children’s publication aimed at giving enjoyment to children.
The well-known Brothers Grimm preserved and published the traditional tales told in Germany. Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen also gathered fairy tales and created new stories in the fairy tale genre.
Later, Lewis Carroll’s fantasy, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, signaled the change in writing style for children to a more imaginative one.
In 1894, Rudyard Kipling published The Jungle Book. Beatrix Potter published The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902.
C. S. Lewis published the first installment of The Chronicles of Narnia series in 1950, and J. R. R. Tolkien, the “father” of modern fantasy literature, wrote The Lord of the Rings a few years later.
A list of the Best Children’s Books
Penguin Books has presented this list of the best children’s books all time.
1. Winnie-The-Pooh by A. A. Milne (1926)
2. Mrs. Pepperpot Stories by Alf Proysen (1956)
3. A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley (1939)
4. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (1877)
5. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)
6. The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery (1943)
7. The Great Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)
8. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome (1930)
9. A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines (1968)
10. The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck by Beatrix Potter (1908)
11. Grimms’ Fairy Tales by The Brothers Grimm (1812)
12. Eragon by Christopher Paolini (2002)
13. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (1950)
14. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843)
15. The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley (1863)
Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev from Pexels.