Children's Books: What Are Your All-Time Favourites?

Some more contemporary ones for younger readers…

Rabbit and Bear - six books in the set, starting with Rabbits Bad habits
Anything by Sophie Henn - picture books
The Wild Robot series
Anything by Rob Biddulph
Anything by Tom Percival
Agree with Shirley Hughes / Jon Klassen
Adventure Mice by Reeves & MacIntyre

theres loads more I could add… but gotta getta move on!

The President's glasses and other books from Peter Donnelly (great books about Dublin's president, they are all so smart and funny)

Irwin's Huge Help by Ira Bova (very beautiful illustrations and great message behind the story - to help others, to let others help you and the importance of tooth brushing)

Most books by J. Donaldson (they all are great and clever rhyming stories)

Any bluey or Julia Donaldson

All Hairy Maclary books. I never got bored of reading these over and over. Same with Johnny Duddle’s ‘The Pirate Cruncher’ that someone else mentioned. It has such beautiful illustrations.
Winnie the Pooh—had a huge book with all of them in (A A Milne with E H Shepherd illustrations—not the Disney versions) and I have such treasured memories of reading these to my eldest when he was little. He
loved them (apart from the heffalump—we only read that once!).
Shirley Hughes’ Alfie books.
Old Bear—again, amazing illustrations.

Bob Graham's picture books. The Frog, Duck and Rabbit books. I am David. The Little House on the Prairie books.

Oh so many!
All of Diana Wynne Jones,
Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series,
Lucy M Boston’s Green Knowe series,
Penelope Lively’s The Voyage of QV66 and The Ghost of Thomas Kempe,
All of E. Nesbit,
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame,
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr,
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce,
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and A Little Princess,
Antonia Forest’s Marlows novels,
All of Cynthia Harnett,
All of Rosemary Sutcliff,
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books,
Mary Norton’s The Borrowers series,
Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes, The Growing Summer, White Boots, Curtain Up and The Circus is Coming,
Penelope Farmer’s Charlotte Sometimes,
Eve Garnett’s One End Street trilogy, especially Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn,
Leon Garfield’s Smith and Devil in the Fog,
Barbara Willard’s Mantlemass series,
Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr,
Tove Jansson’s Moomin series, especially Moominland Midwinter, Moominvalley in November and Moominpappa at Sea,
The House of Sixty Fathers by Meindert deJongh
Mardie’s Adventures by Astrid Lindgren,
Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood and Co series, Bartimaeus series, and Scarlett and Browne series,
Garth Nix’s Sabriel series.
John Masefield’s The Box of Delights,
Nina Bawden’s Carrie’s War and The Peppermint Pig.
Cold Christmas by Nina Beechcroft.
I’ve no doubt there are others that have slipped my mind.

There were several sequels toswish of the Curtain too

Golden Pavements _ they go to drama school
Maddy Alone _ Maddy does a film while the older ones are at drama school
Blue Door Venture _ They open the theatre as a professional rep and get ripped off so have to do lots of theatre jobs across the country while tracking down the thief

And I think possibly one more

Thank you so much @TheBookShelf. I have never read the Dewdrop Inn Holiday by Eve Garnet. I will hunt it down.
I also loved The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown. Wonderful for Children who dream of having their own theatre.

Tom’s Midnight Garden is an absolute classic, and the ending never fails to move me though I must have read it about twenty times since I first encountered it as a child.

Ooh! Too many:

Lone Pine Series (Malcolm Saville) - favourite Wings over Witchend, I think.
The White Riders - Monica Edwards
Castle of Adventure - Enid Blyton
Either The Marlows and the Traitor or the historical pair by Antonia Forest
The House of the Paladin - Violet Needham
Power of Three - Diane Wynne Jones
Winter Holiday - Arthur Ransome
Demon Island - Cecil Baldock
Curtain Up - Noel Streatfield
Horse and His Boy - C S Lewis
Island Magic - Elizabeth Goudge
Cue for Treason - Geoffrey Trease
Three Jays lend a hand - Pat Smythe
Go Saddle the Sea - Joan Aiken

and then ones like The Young Detectives, Cornish Adventure, Monday Adventure, The Kestrals Plot Adventure, The Children who lived in a Barn, Three girls and a Secret, On the Banks of Plum Creek, Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn, The Saturday Sixpence, Elephant Adventure, The Princess of the Chalet School, Three Investigators (Screaming Clock), Brat Farrar, The Princess and the Goblin, The Back of the North Wind, Tom's Midnight Garden, The Children of Green Knowe, The Bullerby Children... etc all feature highly too.

Are ones I can think of offhand.

The Magic Faraway Tree

With the original illustrations.

The mother in the Faraway Tree books worked, she took in washing as I recall. The children worked too, around the house and garden.

Some of the middle class mothers worked - the mother in The Railway Children, Mrs Mannering in the Adventure series. And guardians - Madge Bettany, Sylvia in Ballet Shoes.

The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

I love many amongst those already mentioned and would add to my list the following wonderful children's books:

Satchkin Patchkin (Helen Morgan)
Teddy Robinson books (Joan G Robinson)
Charley (also Joan G Robinson)
The Greatest Gresham (Gillian Avery. As a bookish child, I loved this story about another bookish child!)
Henrietta's House (Elizabeth Goudge).
Three Girls and a Secret (Rene Guillot).

The Amazing Mr Whisper. And I will forever be grateful to the wonderful wonderful MN person who sent me her copies (I could NOT find any to buy). I treasure them and will pass them down to my daughters.

And Henrietta's House, inherited from my mum, who loved it too.

Love your list (but there are three One End Street books not two; Family at One End Street, Further Adventures of the Family from One End Street, and Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn).

We have far too many books including children’s books and at some point will have to have a serious cull. However anything by Diana Wynne Jones , Susan Cooper, Antonia Forest and Rosemary Sutcliff leaves this house only over my lifeless body.

Anything and everything by these authors
Shirley Hughes
Judith Kerr
Jill Murphy
Dick King-Smith

Dodge Smith books, notably, I Capture the Castle and 101 Dalmations
The Carbonel books by Barbara Sleigh
if they are part of collection of significant books that changed children’s literature, the two volumes of The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnet. She won the Carnegie Award for children’s books. They are books about a very ordinary working class family, Dad a dustman and Mum a laundress. It was published in 1937 and showed that children’s books didn’t have to be about middle class or posh kids. I always think of this book when I read Mumsnet posts from women wailing that it is unfair that women have to have jobs when women in the olden days didn’t work. The Family From. One End Street shows that of course working class women have always worked.
Any books by E Nesbit ( The Railway Children and lots more)
Wind in the Willows
The Secret Garden, the first 2/3 of the book are just wonderful.
The Ahlberg books. Love them
Children of the New Forest by Captain Marryat pubd 1847
The Box of Delights, John Masefield. A wonderful Christmas read.
The Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis.
I could recommend many many more books. I love children’s books

Sorry but you sound like a journalist getting mumsnet to do the work for you.

Charlotte's web. Always

All the Arthur Ransome books (user name is a clue).

Winnie the Witch - similar to the poster above, there’s always something new to spot in the illustrations with every read.