List of children's classic books

This is a list of children's classic books published at least 20 years ago and still available in the English language.

Books specifically for children existed by the 17th century. Before that, books were written mainly for adults – although some later became popular with children. Most printed works were hard to come by due to their cost and were mostly available for purchase only by upper class society. Scholarship on children's literature includes professional organizations, dedicated publications, and university courses.

Before 18th century[edit]

Title	Author	Year published	References and Brief Introduction
Panchatantra	Vishnu Sharma	c. 800 BC	Ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. Similar stories are found in later works including Aesop's Fables and the Sindbad tales in Arabian Nights.
Aesop's Fables	Aesop	c. 600 BC
Kathasaritsagara	Somadeva	11th Century AD	Collection of Indian legends, fairy tales and folk tales as retold by a Saivite Brahmin named Somadeva. Generally believed to derive from Gunadhya's Brhat-katha, written in Paisachi dialect from the south of India.[citation needed]
Arabian Nights	unknown	before 8th century AD	[7][8]
Orbis Pictus	John Amos Comenius	1658	Earliest picture book specifically for children.[9][10]
A Token for Children. Being An Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of several Young Children	James Janeway	1672	One of the first books specifically written for children which shaped much eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century writing for children.

18th century[edit]

Title	Author	Year published	References
Robinson Crusoe	Daniel Defoe	1719	[1][3][12]
Gulliver's Travels	Jonathan Swift	1726	[1][13]
Tales of Mother Goose	Charles Perrault	1729 (English)	[3][2][14]
Little Pretty Pocket-book	John Newbery	1744	[15]
Little Goody Two Shoes	Oliver Goldsmith	1765	[16]
Lessons for Children	Anna Laetitia Barbauld	1778-9	The first series of age-adapted reading primers for children printed with large text and wide margins; in print for over a century.[17]
The History of Sandford and Merton	Thomas Day	1783-9	A bestseller for over a century, it embodied Rousseau's educational ideals.[18]

19th century[edit]

Title	Author	Year published	References
The Swiss Family Robinson	Johann Rudolf Wyss	1812-3	[1]
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King	E. T. A. Hoffman	1816	[19]
Ivanhoe	Walter Scott	1819	[20]
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow	Washington Irving	1819	[1][21]
Rip Van Winkle	Washington Irving	1820	[1][22]
Grimm's Fairy Tales	Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm	1823 (English)	[3][23]
A Visit From St. Nicholas	Clement Clarke Moore	1823	[3]
Tales of Peter Parley About America	Peter Parley (pseudonym)	1827	[3]
Oliver Twist	Charles Dickens	1838	[1]
Nicholas Nickelby	Charles Dickens	1839
A Christmas Carol	Charles Dickens	1843	[1][2]
The Three Musketeers	Alexandre Dumas, père	1844
The Count of Monte Cristo	Alexandre Dumas, père	1845
Fairy Tales	Hans Christian Andersen	1846 (English)	[3]
The Children of the New Forest	Frederick Marryat	1847
Slovenly Peter	Heinrich Hoffmann	1848 (English)
David Copperfield	Charles Dickens	1850	[1]
The Wide, Wide World	Elizabeth Wetherell (pseudonym)	1850	[3]
The King of the Golden River	John Ruskin	1851	[3]
Little Eva: The Flower of the South	Philip J. Cozans	1853	First known children's novel to feature racial (i.e. pro-slavery) bias.[citation needed]
A Tale of Two Cities	Charles Dickens	1853	[1]
The Coral Island	R. M. Ballantyne	1857
Tom Brown's Schooldays	Thomas Hughes	1857	[3]
Great Expectations	Charles Dickens	1861	[1][24]
The Water Babies	Charles Kingsley	1863	[3]
A Journey to the Center of the Earth	Jules Verne	1864	[1]
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland	Lewis Carroll	1865	[1][2]
Max and Moritz	Wilhelm Busch	1865
Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates	Mary Mapes Dodge	1865	[1]
Little Women	Louisa May Alcott	1868	[1][3][2]
Ragged Dick	Horatio Alger, Jr.	1868	[3]
Lorna Doone	R. D. Blackmore	1869
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea	Jules Verne	1870	[1]
At the Back of the North Wind	George MacDonald	1871	[1]
The Princess and the Goblin	George MacDonald	1871	[3]
Through the Looking-Glass	Lewis Carroll	1871	[1][3]
A Dog of Flanders	Ouida	1872
What Katy Did	Susan Coolidge	1873	[3]
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Mark Twain	1876	[1][3][2][25]
Black Beauty	Anna Sewell	1877	[1][3]
The Adventures of Pinocchio	Carlo Collodi	1883	[1][3][2][25]
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood	Howard Pyle	1883	[2][25]
Nights with Uncle Remus	Joel Chandler Harris	1883
Treasure Island	Robert Louis Stevenson	1883	[1][3][2][25]
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Mark Twain	1884	[1][25]
Heidi	Johanna Spyri	1884 (English)	[3]
King Solomon's Mines	H. Rider Haggard	1885
Kidnapped	Robert Louis Stevenson	1886	[1][2]
Little Lord Fauntleroy	Frances Hodgson Burnett	1886	[1][3]
The Happy Prince and Other Tales	Oscar Wilde	1888
The Blue Fairy Book	Andrew Lang	1889
The Jungle Book	Rudyard Kipling	1894	[1][3][2][25]
Seven Little Australians	Ethel Turner	1894	[3]
The Second Jungle Book	Rudyard Kipling	1895	[1]
Moonfleet	J. Meade Falkner	1898
The Black Corsair	Emilio Salgari	1898
The Story of the Treasure Seekers	E. Nesbit	1899

20th century[edit]

Title	Author	Year published	References
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1900	[1][3][2][25]
The Tigers of Mompracem	Emilio Salgari	1900
Five Children and It	E. Nesbit	1902	[3]
Just So Stories	Rudyard Kipling	1902	[1][3][2]
The Tale of Peter Rabbit	Beatrix Potter	1902	[3][2]
King Arthur and His Knights	Howard Pyle	1902-3
The Call of the Wild	Jack London	1903	[1]
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm	Kate Douglas Wiggin	1903	[1]
A Little Princess	Frances Hodgson Burnett	1905	[1][3]
The Railway Children	E. Nesbit	1906
White Fang	Jack London	1906
Anne of Green Gables	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1908	[1][3]
The Wind in the Willows	Kenneth Grahame	1908	[1][3][25]
The Secret Garden	Frances Hodgson Burnett	1909/1911	[1][3][2]
Peter and Wendy	J. M. Barrie	1911	[2] Based on the author's play Peter Pan (1904)
The Lost World	Sir Arthur Conan Doyle	1912
Pollyanna	Eleanor H. Porter	1913	[3]
The Magic Pudding	Norman Lindsay	1918	[26]
The Story of Doctor Dolittle	Hugh Lofting	1920	[1][3][2]
The Heart of a Dog	Albert Payson Terhune	1921	[1]
Juan Bobo	Puerto Rican school children	1921	[27]
Velveteen Rabbit	Margery Bianco	1922	[1]
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle	Hugh Lofting	1922	[1]
The Dark Frigate	Charles Boardman Hawes	1923	[1]
Smoky the Cowhorse	Will James	1926	[1]
Winnie-the-Pooh	A. A. Milne	1926	[1][3][2]
The House at Pooh Corner	A. A. Milne	1928	[1][3]
Bambi	Felix Salten	1928	[1]
The Trumpeter of Krakow	Eric P. Kelly	1928	[1]
Emil and the Detectives	Erich Kästner	1929	[28]
Swallows and Amazons	Arthur Ransome	1930–1931	[3]
Little House in the Big Woods	Laura Ingalls Wilder	1932	[1]
The Hobbit	J. R. R. Tolkien	1937	[1][3][2][25]
The Reluctant Dragon	Kenneth Grahame	1938	[2]
Curious George	H. A. Rey	1941
Five on a Treasure Island	Enid Blyton	1942
Johnny Tremain	Esther Forbes	1943	[1][2]
The Little Prince	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry	1943	[1][29]
Pippi Longstocking	Astrid Lindgren	1945	[1][30]
The Little White Horse	Elizabeth Goudge	1946
Goodnight Moon	Margaret Wise Brown	1947	[2][31]
Finn Family Moomintroll	Tove Jansson	1949	[32]
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe	C.S. Lewis	1950	[1][3][2][25]
Charlotte's Web	E. B. White	1952	[1][33][34]
The Cat in the Hat	Dr. Seuss	1957	First high quality limited-vocabulary book, written for early readers[citation needed]
Tom's Midnight Garden	Philippa Pearce	1958
James and the Giant Peach	Roald Dahl	1961	[1]
The Phantom Tollbooth	Norton Juster	1961	[1]
To Kill a Mockingbird	Harper Lee	1962	Widely read work on race.[35][36]
Where the Wild Things Are	Maurice Sendak	1963
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory	Roald Dahl	1964	[1]
A Wizard of Earthsea	Ursula K. Le Guin	1968	With its sequels, it broke ground for epic fantasy in several ways: the first book had a non-white hero, the later books explored the role of gender in fantasy and power, and the quest structure is not good vs. evil but balance.[citation needed]
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret	Judy Blume	1970	approached puberty more openly than children's books had in the past.[citation needed]
A Taste of Blackberries	Doris Buchanan Smith	1973	Taboo breaking children's book (Grades 4-6) concerning a child's first grief experience. HarperCollins. 19th edition published 2005.