The Royal Shakespeare Company staging Matilda The Musical (Anthony Upton/PA) Joining these books were The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, which came fourth, and JRR Tolkien’s book The Hobbit, which came fifth. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland came second, while Astrid Lindgren’s book Pippi Longstocking placed third.

Maurice Sendak’s beloved story about a little boy called Max, who visits an island inhabited by monsters, simply called the Wild Things, came top in a poll run by BBC Culture, which asked children’s authors, illustrators, publishers, academics and people from across the world to vote for their top 10 favourite children’s books from a selection of more than 1,000. These adventures are drawn from mythic roots – the river of forgetfulness, the trolls turned to stone by the touch of daylight, the ring of invisibility, the monster – and their mythic power is channelled through magnificent storytelling.Where The Wild Things Are has topped a poll of the 100 greatest children’s books, with classics including Matilda, The Hobbit and Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland also making the list. Bilbo survives a series of chilling adventures to become the unlikeliest of heroes in his confrontation with the dragon Smaug. it was a rarefied and highly personal world, yet it proved a fertile soil from which his great fantasy novels were to grow.įirst of these, and for many the finest, was the tale of Bilbo Baggins, the sedentary hobbit who is persuaded by the benign wizard Gandalf into joining a treasure hunt.

Tolkien believed that the roots of myth and the roots of language are one and indivisible, and he demonstrated this belief by creating an entirely new language (Elvish) with its own grammar, its own beautiful script and its own mythology.

The strength of Tolkien’s work is in its fidelity to its roots, which lie in the legends of the Nordic world. Tolkien, the reclusive, pipe-smoking Oxford don, was in the vanguard, and so great was his achievement that his name became virtually synonymous with the literature of fantasy.

An increasing interest in the roots of culture, together with a recognition of the importance of myth and archetype in understanding the human condition, led to a reflorescence of myth-based literature in the 20th century. All cultures have their myths – tales of gods and giants, monsters and marvels. Since the dawn of time, storytelling and the fantastic have gone hand in hand.

The hobbit book series