No 53 The final round-up
As I briefly explained last week, I have cajoled an extra slot out of Family's editors in order, really, to salve my conscience. There are too many wonderful books still out there for me not to try to gather at least some of them together at the last.
There are all the ones that for various reasons got squeezed out of the top 50, such as Stig of the Dump, Lucy M Boston's The Children of Green Knowe (edged out, as were Charlotte Sometimes and Marianne Dreams, by Tom's Midnight Garden) and The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler by Gene Kemp, which provided my first experience of the joy of the totally unexpected twist to a tale but which somehow kept getting bumped for other delights.
Then there are those that never seized my own imagination as a child but which should of course be included regardless. I would hate my own deeply held and entirely illogical prejudice against talking animals, for example, to keep The Wind in the Willows (the overwhelming childhood favourite of my otherwise fiction-resistant husband), Tarka the Otter or Beatrix Potter off anyone's shelves. (For the avoidance of doubt, the Moomins are not talking animals. They are non-human creatures who happen to talk. This is entirely different.)
The Book corner brief was to write in the main about books I had known and loved as a child, which of course meant that I didn't do any justice at all to anything written after about 1990, and of course I can't even hope to start now. But I have to rave about just a few of the most recent ones – Celia Rees' Witch Child, based on the Salem trials and as psychologically acute an account of moral panic as you could hope to read and a fine weapon with which to arm any child in the battle against all its modern forms, Mary Hooper's historical fiction, and Hilary McKay's sequel to my beloved Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess, which I approached warily but which turned out to be wonderful. And the Chaos Walking trilogy (the third part is due out in May next year, and I honestly don't know how I'm going to wait that long) by Patrick Ness, which I would press urgently on anyone, anyone at all, but particularly on any reluctant readers among older boys. If it doesn't break down their resistance within the first 10 pages, I want to know. It is extraordinary.
Finally, there are all the books that so many readers were kind enough to share with me, reminding me of forgotten joys such as The Shrinking of Treehorn, Flat Stanley, the Darkness Rising series and introducing me to Understood Betsy, Cynthia Harnett and … I'm out of space. Thank you, and happy reading to you all.
Book corner: The full list of Lucy Mangan's choices
No 1 The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster(1961)
No 2 Enid Blyton (1897-1968)
No 3 The Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories by Joyce Lankester Brisley (1928)
No 4 The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1909)
No 5 The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1935)
No 6 Just William by Richmal Crompton (1922)
No 7 Private - Keep Out! by Gwen Grant (1978)
No 8 The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnett (1937)
No 9 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868-69)
No 10 The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis (1950-56)
No 11 King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green (1953)
No 12 Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (1958)
No 13 Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary (1955)
No 14 Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild (1936)
No 15 Dimsie Goes to School by Dorita Fairlie Bruce (1921)
No 16 Autumn Term by Antonia Forest (1948)
No 17 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (1964)
No 18 The One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith (1956)
No 19 The Wombles by Elizabeth Beresford (1968)
No 20 The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken (1963)
No 21 The Six Bullerby Children by Astrid Lindgren (1947)
No 22 A Little History of the World by EH Gombrich (1935)
No 23 What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge (1872)
No 24 Life with Lisa by Sybil Burr (1958)
No 25 Charlotte's Web by EB White (1952)
No 26 The Children of the New Forest by Captain Marryat (1847)
No 27 The Borrowers by Mary Norton (1952)
No 28 Dear Teddy Robinson by Joan G Robinson (1953)
No 29 Tottie: the Story of a Doll's House by Rumer Godden (1947)
No 30 The Borribles by Michael de Larrabeiti (1976)
No 31 The Railway Children by E Nesbit (1906)
No 32 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (1876)
No 33 Grow up, Cupid by June Oldham (1988)
No 34 Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian (1981)
No 35 Fireweed by Jill Paton Walsh (1970)
No 36 The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson (1968)
No 37 Grinny by Nicholas Fisk (1973)
No 38 All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor (1951)
No 39 The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright (1941)
No 40 Alison Uttley's A Traveller in Time (1939)
No 41 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847)
No 42 Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster (1912)
No 43 My Naughty Little Sister by Dorothy Edwards (1952)
No 44 The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse (1938)
No 45 The Trouble with Donovan Croft by Bernard Ashley (1974)
No 46 Ladybird books
No 47 Alices Adventures in Wonderland: by Lewis Carroll (1865)
No 48 Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret: by Judy Blume (1970)
No 49 The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy (1974)
No 50 Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery (1908)
No 51 Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C O'Brien (1971)
No 52 Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson (1948)
