TOP 10 CHILDREN’S FANTASY BOOKS (SPECIAL MENTION)

 

But wait – there’s more!

I’ve ranked my Top 10 Children’s Fantasy Books but given how prolific a sub-genre children’s fantasy is, as well as how significant it is both as a proportion of fantasy in general and of children’s literature, there’s more than enough entries for my usual twenty special mentions. .

My first five special mention entries consist of three entries from my Top 10 Fantasy Books and of two entries from my special mentions, reflecting their significance not only as general fantasy but also as or for children’s fantasy.

At present, I have only nine special mentions as opposed to my usual twenty special mentions – because it’s a work in progress as I consider potential entries from classic children’s fantasy that I’ve neglected or overlooked.

 

 

 

 

(1) J.R.R. TOLKIEN –

THE HOBBIT (1937)

 

While the top entry in my Top 10 Fantasy Books, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, was written for adult readers, it is also regularly read by children – as indeed it was by me, first reading and being enchanted by it as a child.

However, the book to which it was a sequel, The Hobbit, was very much a children’s fantasy book, evident from its opening line onwards. Hence, it has to be Tolkien’s entry among my special mentions for children’s fantasy books – and it has to be my first special mention, reflecting Tolkien’s top spot for fantasy books in general.

“The Hobbit is set in Middle-earth and follows home-loving Bilbo Baggins, the titular hobbit who joins the wizard Gandalf and the thirteen dwarves of Thorin’s Company on a quest to reclaim the dwarves’ home and treasure from the dragon Smaug…The story is told in the form of a picaresque or episodic quest, several chapters introduce a new type of monster or threat as Bilbo progresses through the landscape.”

It might be more accurate to describe The Lord of the Rings as successor to The Hobbit rather than sequel – “the story began as a sequel to Tolkien’s 1937 children’s book The Hobbit but eventually developed into a much larger work.” However, there’s still parts of The Lord of the Rings that evoke the sense of children’s fantasy, or at least the childlike sense of wonder, from The Hobbit – particularly in the opening birthday party for Bilbo through to Tom Bombadil, the latter very much a character of children’s fantasy whimsy who wandered into the main plot.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

 

(2) C.S. LEWIS –
NARNIA CHRONICLES (1950-1956)

 

It’s a rare child in Anglophone culture that doesn’t know about Narnia, and the Narnia Chronicles are arguably more definitive as children’s fantasy than Tolkien, particularly when it comes to children’s fantasy involving secondary worlds. Hence the Narnia Chronicles are not only second top spot after Tolkien in my Top 10 Fantasy Books, but also second place special mention after Tolkien here.

It also features child protagonists, who find themselves drawn from our world (specifically England) to Narnia through magic portals – hence the description of the Narnia Chronicles in Wikipedia as portal fantasy.

However, if one character both embodies Narnia and rises above the others, albeit not so much as protagonist but as the moving force behind the world – from singing it into being in the beginning to literally closing the door on it in the end – it’s Aslan.

And Aslan embodies the spirit of Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles, those seven fantasy books that continue to inspire readers and remain among the most popular fantasy books or series, strikingly so for children’s fantasy books and explicitly Christian ones at that, although many readers remain unaware of the Christian themes.

Narnia might lack the same grandeur as Middle-Earth but for me it will always have a charm and place close to my heart, with these books as something of a recurring source of familiar comfort even as an adult. And so enchanting that after reading its Chronicles, what young reader doesn’t search wardrobes for other worlds? (Or hot White Witches with Turkish delight? Except I’ll pass on the Turkish delight). I know I still do…

 

RATING: 5 STARS****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

 

 

(3) DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (1974 – PRESENT)

 

Although I do have a special mention entry for an actual Encyclopedia of Fantasy, Dungeons & Dragons remains the best de facto encyclopedic treatment of fantasy themes and tropes- which is not surprising for something that strives to systematically codify the genre of fantasy for obsessive-compulsive rules-lawyering geeks to play as a game.

Hence it was the third special mention entry for my Top 10 Fantasy Books, but what people may forget is its popularity as a game among children or teenagers – something of which the TV Series Stranger Things reminded us. Accordingly, it earns the third special mention entry here.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
(S-TIER: GOD TIER)

 

 

 

(4) JOHN CLUTE & JOHN GRANT –
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASY (1997)

 

As children’s fantasy is such a substantial part of fantasy (and a substantial part of literature for children), it’s not surprising that my special mention for the Encyclopedia of Fantasy carries over from fantasy in general to children’s fantasy as well.

Indeed, its entry “Children’s Fantasy” alone pays the price of admission to special mention here – from the origins and establishment of children’s fantasy as a distinctive sub-genre of fantasy to the predominant modes of children’s fantasy as worlds in miniature, secret gardens, time fantasies, otherworlds, wish fulfilment, and animal stories.

Of course, it also has entries for individual creators and works of children’s fantasy, although sadly not updated from its online publication.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

*

 

 

(5) GARTH NIX –

OLD KINGDOM & THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM (1995 – 2021)

 

And now we come to a number of entries that I’ll call better than Potter – that is, children’s fantasy series that while reminiscent of or similar to Harry Potter, should have received the same or greater extent of readership, media adaptation, and popular acclaim.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t particularly dislike Harry Potter but I don’t particularly like it either, when there are better books or series of children’s fantasy out there in my opinion.

And foremost among them are those by this Australian writer, notably the cosmic fantasy of his Keys to the Kingdom series and the casual necromancy of his Old Kingdom series. I ranked the former in fourth place in my Top 10 Fantasy Books, but that should not obscure that it and the Old Kingdom series are written for younger and older readers alike – hence my fifth place special mention here.

 

 

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

 

(6) ROALD DAHL –

CHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

(1964)

 

“Come with me and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination”

Roald Dahl earns special mention in my top literature because of his short stories for adults, but his adult work is eclipsed in popularity by his books or stories for children and it probably isn’t even close – Dahl has been called “one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century”.

His short stories for adults excel in that archetypal ingredient of short stories, the twist in the tale at the end of the story. For Dahl, that was usually of a dark or macabre nature, something which carried over into his children’s literature only with fantasy, arguably bordering on horror.

Dahl’s children’s books are known “for their unsentimental, macabre, often darkly comic mood, featuring villainous adult enemies of the child characters” as well as championing “the kindhearted” and featuring “an underlying warm sentiment”.

And most of them are classics of children’s fantasy, so much so that they could be the subject of their own top ten – James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Witches just to name a few.

However, there could only be one candidate for Dahl’s most iconic book for children and that is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Of course, a large part of that is the cult classic film adaptation in 1971, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – elevating the eccentric chocolate factory owner to the title instead of Charlie. Director Mel Stuart and even more so Gene Wilder portraying the titular character made Dahl’s book their own, at least in memetic popular culture. In fairness, Dahl’s writing career also extended to screenplays and hence he wrote the screenplay for the film, ensuring its faithfulness to the book.

Sadly, fewer people know of the book’s sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator in 1972, probably because it has never been adapted to film or television as far as I’m aware – and even more sadly, Dahl apparently planned a third book in the series but never finished it.

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

 

 

(7) RICK RIORDAN –

PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS (2005 – PRESENT)

 

Yes – it’s another one of my entries that are better than Potter.

In my eyes, the Percy Jackson series has a similar core concept to that of Harry Potter – a magical world that exists in hidden masquerade within our own but I just like Percy Jackson better because it’s magical world is that of classical mythology.

I also prefer the ingenuity with which the Percy Jackson applies that core concept – such as that mythic geography moves with the human psyche, such that Mount Olympus has moved with the seat of western civilization to the United States or that the “Sea of Monsters” in the Odyssey has moved to the Caribbean (hence the Bermuda Triangle).

As for the series, it revolves around the titular protagonist Percy Jackson as a son of Poseidon and hence superpowered demigod facing a literal clash of the Titans in our contemporary world. It’s a nice personal touch that the idea for it started with Rick Riordan telling his son bedtime stories – and he adapted his son’s dyslexia and ADHD to traits of the protagonist (because the latter’s mind is hardwired for Greek rather than English).

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

 

(8) RICHARD HARLAND –

FERREN TRILOGY (2023-2025 – rewritten version of his Heaven and Earth trilogy 2000-2003)

 

Another of my better than Potter entries, this Australian post-apocalyptic fantasy trilogy combines two of my favorite fantasy tropes – a post-apocalyptic setting, particularly in its rarer fantasy version as opposed to the more common science fiction version, as well as the rage against the heavens or war on heaven trope. The latter is the source of the apocalypse.

The premise is straightforward. It turned out that space wasn’t the final frontier, but heaven was – as human technology turned to the exploration of the afterlife. So, like all frontiers, exploration led to invasion, as humanity’s celestial astronauts – psychonauts – trampled the sacred fields of Heaven.

Of course you know, that meant war – and it didn’t go too well for us. Eurasia is still burning – the Burning Continents – from the portions of Heavenly ether that fell on it from the Great Collapse, while much of north America is frozen under an angelic ice sheet.

And we’re still fighting the war against Heaven – except that by we, I only loosely mean humanity. Most of actual humanity that has survived the war, at least in Australia, have been reduced to so-called Residuals living in tribes. The war is waged by the possibly posthuman and certainly inhuman Humen, led by the technocratic Doctors, although they seem to use that title in the same sense supervillains do – or Doctor Josef Mengele, who seems to be invoked by the name of two Doctors who led the war against Heaven from South America.

The Residuals are nominally allies with the Humen against Heaven and its angels but are used more as cannon fodder – in perhaps the most literal way possible. All this changes when the titular young male Residual happens across a stray angel left behind after being wounded in battle…

As I said, it’s Australian post-apocalyptic fantasy – both in its setting, and perhaps not surprisingly given that setting, fantasy written by an Australian author (albeit originally from Britain). Forget Harry Potter – with Garth Nix in my top ten and Richard Harland in my special mentions, it seems all the best young adult fantasy is from Australia.

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

(9) J.K. ROWLING –

HARRY POTTER (1997-2007)

 

I suppose I have an obligation to mention Harry Potter somewhere in special mentions for children’s fantasy. I believe I’ve fulfilled that obligation.

But seriously, I’ve reserved Harry Potter for particularly special mention – my wild-tier special mention, ultimately destined for my final twentieth special mention, as my moving baseline above which I rank other, better children’s fantasy. In short, the criteria – or rather the criterion – for my children’s fantasy special mentions is that it is what I like to call better than Potter.

I couldn’t resist the running gag of using Harry Potter as my moving baseline but I’m joking and I’m serious. Look, I don’t dislike Harry Potter – wizard school is obviously a great premise with a natural appeal to children and I wish I’d thought of it – but I like it best as a baseline for other, better children’s fantasy to rank above it.

 

RATING:

X-TIER (WILD TIER)