20th Century
| Title | Author | Year published | References |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Wonderful Wizard of Oz | L. Frank Baum | 1900 | |
| Five Children and It | E. Nesbit | 1902 | |
| Just So Stories | Rudyard Kipling | 1902 | |
| The Tale of Peter Rabbit | Beatrix Potter | 1902 | |
| King Arthur and His Knights | Howard Pyle | 1902-3 | |
| The Call of the Wild | Jack London | 1903 | |
| Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm | Kate Douglas Wiggin | 1903 | |
| Peter Pan | J. M. Barrie | 1904 | |
| A Little Princess | Frances Hodgson Burnett | 1905 | |
| The Railway Children | E. Nesbit | 1906 | |
| White Fang | Jack London | 1906 | |
| Anne of Green Gables | Lucy Maud Montgomery | 1908 | |
| The Wind in the Willows | Kenneth Grahame | 1908 | |
| The Secret Garden | Frances Hodgson Burnett | 1909/1911 | |
| The Lost World | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | 1912 | |
| Pollyanna | Eleanor H. Porter | 1913 | |
| The Magic Pudding | Norman Lindsay | 1918 | |
| The Story of Doctor Dolittle | Hugh Lofting | 1920 | |
| Winnie-the-Pooh | A. A. Milne | 1926 | |
| The House at Pooh Corner | A. A. Milne | 1927 | |
| Emil and the Detectives | Erich Kästner | 1929 | |
| Swallows and Amazons | Arthur Ransome | 1930–1931 | |
| Little House in the Big Woods | Laura Ingalls Wilder | 1932 | |
| The Hobbit | J. R. R. Tolkien | 1937 | |
| The Reluctant Dragon | Kenneth Grahame | 1938 | |
| Curious George | H. A. Rey | 1941 | |
| Five on a Treasure Island | Enid Blyton | 1942 | |
| Johnny Tremain | Esther Forbes | 1943 | |
| The Little Prince | Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | 1943 | |
| Pippi Longstocking | Astrid Lindgren | 1945 | |
| The Little White Horse | Elizabeth Goudge | 1946 | |
| Goodnight Moon | Margaret Wise Brown | 1947 | |
| Finn Family Moomintroll | Tove Jansson | 1949 | |
| The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe | C.S. Lewis | 1950 | |
| The Cat in the Hat | Dr. Seuss | 1957 | First high quality limited-vocabulary book, written for early readers |
| James and the Giant Peach | Roald Dahl | 1961 | |
| The Phantom Tollbooth | Norton Juster | 1961 | |
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | 1962 | Pulitzer for book market to children; also seminal work on race. |
| Where the Wild Things Are | Maurice Sendak | 1963 | |
| Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | Roald Dahl | 1964 | |
| A Wizard of Earthsea | Ursula K. Le Guin | 1968 | and sequels 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. |
| Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret | Judy Blume | 1970 | approached puberty more openly than children's books had in the past. |
| A Taste of Blackberries | Doris Buchanan Smith | 1973 | Groundbreaking children's book (Grades 4-6) about death and grieving. Currently in its 19th edition (2005). |
Read more about this topic: List Of Children's Classic Books
Famous quotes containing the word century:
“I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)