Poll Results: The Best Middle Grade Books Of The 21st Century

Back in our launch week, which seems like years but was actually only just four months ago, SF Said wrote a brilliant piece for MGSB questioning why there were no books for children or young adults listed in a (then) recent poll organised by the BBC to discover the best books of the 21^st Century. We decided that we would run our own poll on MGSB to find out which middle grade books our readers and contributors felt were worthy to appear in list of the best children’s books of the 21^st century so far. We intended to get the results out soon after we closed the poll, but one thing led to another and life has been pretty crazy, so apologies for keeping you waiting.

Before we present the results, I need to explain a decision that we have made regarding the votes. Over the weeks following the poll there were quite a few Top 10 lists appearing across various forms of the media, leading to much discussion regarding their relevance, with some commentators questioning this need to rank books and authors. We have therefore decided that we are not going to give any individual scores, nor are we going to name books that scored much higher than others. Instead we decided that any book that received three or more votes would deserve a place on our list, which we would present in chronological order of the books’ release dates.

A few points before we reveal the list:

• Louis Sachar’s Holes received a good number of votes but was published in 1998 so does not qualify in this instance (even if it is a flippin’ great book).
• A number of the Harry Potter books received more than the requisite three votes. Some of these books were published pre-2000 so do not qualify for the list. In the interest of keeping things balanced we have only included the Harry Potter book from the 21st Century that received the most votes.
• All three books in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series received more than three votes, but as SF Said pointed out at the time of the poll, Pullman intended for the trilogy to be seen as one complete story, and the third book in the trilogy was published in 2000 so qualifies as far as we are concerned.
• The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness scored well, but as it is a YA book it does not qualify for this poll.

And so on with the results:

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2006

2007

2008

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

(Note: In the case of His Dark Materials and the Harry Potter series, The Amber Spyglass and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire each received the most votes out of those voted for from their respective series)


I think you will agree that this is a pretty incredible list of books that every lover of middle grade fiction should read (I’ll be honest – there are a handful that I need to add to the ever-towering TBR pile now). We would love to hear your thoughts on the results. Did your favourite make it to the list? Are there any glaring omissions? And what about 2005 and 2009? Were they particularly dry years for quality children’s fiction?

Big thanks to all who took the time to add their votes to the poll.

The Best Books Of The 21st Century?

The BBC recently conducted a poll to find the best books of the 21st Century.  They asked "several dozen critics" to vote.  Sadly, these critics didn't seem to know anything about children's & young adult literature, because there was no mention on their list of Philip Pullman or JK Rowling.  No Mark Haddon, Jacqueline Wilson, David Almond, Meg Rosoff, Patrick Ness, Malorie Blackman; no RJ Palacio, MT Anderson, Kate DiCamillo, Louis Sachar… nothing.  Not a single MG or YA book appeared on that list.

How can anyone write about 21st Century fiction without mentioning Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, at the very least?  Some of the richest and most imaginative contemporary literature is being written for young readers.  In a hundred years time, many of these books will be classics.  It's hard to imagine a list of classic Edwardian literature that doesn't include Rudyard Kipling or E Nesbit; Peter Pan or The Secret Garden.  Yet their modern equivalents are being overlooked, especially MG books.

I feel certain that one day, Kate Saunders's Five Children On The Western Front will join Nesbit's original Five Children And It on classic literature lists.  But in all the discussion of this year's Costa Book Awards, it was barely mentioned outside the children's books world.

I don't want to take anything away from H Is For Hawk, which won the Costa, or The Brief And Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, which topped the BBC list.  I loved that book and what it did with texts like The Lord Of The Rings.  But it didn't seem to me to be qualitatively different to what MT Anderson did with 18th century texts in The Astonishing Life Of Octavian Nothing, Traitor To The Nation; or what Philip Pullman did with Milton, Blake and the Bible in His Dark Materials.  So I'm not arguing against adult literary fiction.  I just don't understand why the entire field of children's literature gets excluded from lists like this.  I think it should be recognised and included too.

It's arguable that high culture – as represented by literary prizes, traditional media and universities – has never taken children's literature seriously.  Prejudice remains to the point that some people deny children's fiction can be literature at all.  Last year, the University Of Kent sparked a controversy on Twitter by appearing to suggest exactly this; I wrote a bit about it at the time.  

Yet anyone who's taken the time to read some contemporary children's literature will know how brilliant the best of it is.  "A loved children's book sears into you," Francesca Simon told me recently.  "It becomes part of who you are, what you love, what you care about, in a way no adult book could ever emulate."

That's certainly my experience.  I will never forget reading Watership Down at the age of 8: it changed my life.  But it was only on re-reading it as an adult that I realised its depth; its allusions to world mythology, Greek tragedy and Shakespeare; its political and philosophical dimensions.  It's a multi-layered work of astonishing scope and ambition – yet at 8, I could enjoy it as a thrilling, page-turning adventure.

That was exactly the kind of book I wanted to write myself, one day.  My aim was to make modern myths: stories anyone could enjoy, however old they were.  Whether or not I succeed in my aim, I've never doubted that children's fiction is the place to do it.  Because books like Watership Down and The Jungle Books, Harry Potter and His Dark Materials have proved again and again that children's literature is really just literature, transcending every kind of label.

We're lucky to have so many amazing people working in children's books today.  Of course, there are writers – from 1960s veterans like Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, Ursula Le Guin and Peter Dickinson (all still active), to the newest breakthrough authors, like Abi Elphinstone, Tatum Flynn, Lu Hersey and Katherine Woodfine (all with debuts this year!)  But we also have excellent critics like Julia Eccleshare, Amanda Craig, Nicolette Jones, Daniel Hahn, Imogen Russell Williams and Lorna Bradbury (none of whom the BBC apparently consulted for their poll).  We've had a series of brilliant Children's Laureates spreading the word, none more powerfully than current Laureate Malorie Blackman.  We have dedicated organisations like Booktrust, the CLPE and the UKLA; hugely vibrant blogging and vlogging communities; and a massive presence in online spaces like the Guardian children's books site and Twitter, where children's books routinely dominate hashtag games like #bookadayuk. 

All of this is amazing.  So why doesn't the field receive more recognition in the wider world?  Only one children's prize-winner has ever won the overall Costa/Whitbread Book of the Year so far (The Amber Spyglass, which made history when it became the first).  Not a single children's book has ever made a Booker shortlist, let alone won.  Mainstream media coverage is almost non-existent.  Children's books now account for 1/4 of the entire UK book market.  Should they therefore not receive 1/4 of review space and other attention?  In reality, they get less than 1/40.

So I'm delighted to see so many people coming together behind BookZone's brilliant MG Strikes Back initiative.  And I'm glad to announce that we're doing a poll here to balance out the BBC one: a poll of the best 21st Century children's books so far.  Not to say that any book is better than any other, but just to point out how many fantastic books have been written in our field over the last 15 years – and to show that the field as a whole deserves to be included, recognised and celebrated by the wider culture at large.  So please go along to the polling page here, cast your vote, and make your voice heard!