From The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Bram Stoker's Dracula, a panel of experts from Puffin have put together a list of the best children's books as a guide for parents.
by: Stephen Adams
Editors have come up with the list of 70 books from their titles to celebrate Puffin's 70th anniversary.
The books are split into a range of categories, from "weird and wonderful" classics such as Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, to what Puffin calls "weepies" like Watership Down, and "swashbucklers" including Treasure Island.
Roald Dahl gets his own category, which in reverence to the late author's unique style Puffin has called the "best Phizzwhizzers".
It includes his timeless tales The BFG, Matilda, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, and Fantastic Mr Fox.
Dahl sells more books every year than any other Penguin author in both the adults and children's categories – and his sales jumped by 35 per cent in 2009.
For teenage readers there is a section titled "best alternatives to Twilight", the vampire love story series by Stephenie Meyer - who is not a member of the Penguin family.
A selection for very young readers, called "the best to cuddle-up with", includes Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar – a copy of which is sold somewhere around the world once every 30 seconds – and Peepo! by Janet and Allan Ahlberg.
The list is not all fun and fantasy: it includes "the best war and conflict", headed by the unrivalled Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.
Francesca Dow, managing director of Puffin, thought parents needed a helping hand when picking books for their children.
"There's so many books out there that it can seem like a bit of a minefield," she said.
The list is also included in The Puffin Handbook, a new free guide offering advice on children's reading.
Dow said: "These are the tried and tested favourites, the best selling classics for years."
She and her editors picked the list using a mix of sales data, by talking to librarians, teachers and parents, and by trusting their own judgement.
She said it had been "enormously difficult" to narrow down the books to just 70, "because we have so many favourites".
Asked which her own personal favourites were, she answered: "That's an impossible question."
But she did profess a fondness for Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Charlotte's Web by EB White.
Puffin was founded in 1940 as a series of non-fiction picture books for children. The first story book to be published was Worzel Gummidge by Barbara Euphan Todd in 1941. Sadly the talking scarecrow did not make the cut.
From: Telegraph
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