10 favorite children's book authors

[magid]

In no particular order, since I wouldn't be able to rank them, anyway.

Diana Wynne Jones
Edward Eager
Joan Aiken
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Cynthia Voight
Ellen Raskin
Daniel Pinkwater
Joan Bauer
E. L. Konigsburg
Mildred Taylor

Some of these write light, funny books, some more serious ones, but all write wonderful books.
Why are so many of these authors women? Am I biased, or do more kid (sorry, young adult) books get written by women?
Oh, and Madeline L'Engle might've made it onto the list if she weren't so uneven: there are some of hers I love, and some I thought were just blah. Not to mention not so subtle religious undertones (that goes for C. S. Lewis, too).

[22:10 Addendum: I didn't include authors who have just one or two kid books in this list, so no Norton Juster, for instance, though The Phantom Tollbooth is absolutely wonderful.]

Comments

[gingicat]

Interestingly, the two male authors you have are people I never heard of before I met you.

What about Lloyd Alexander?

Lloyd Alexander, etc.

[magid.livejournal.com]

When I first read The Black Cauldron, etc, I found them really really dark. Which is not to say that they are (I just reread Watership Down and found it not nearly as scary as I remember), just that they seemed that way at the time. I didn't find his lighter stuff until much later (and have reread Westmark far too many times...). I keep telling myself I should reread the Cauldron (etc.) books, but haven't yet. So he's never made it onto a list of favorite authors, though I do think he's quite good.

I'm surprised you hadn't heard of either Edward Eager or Daniel Pinkwater, actually. The former has been around for ages (well, his books have; I'm somehow assuming that he's no longer extant), and the latter has so many books, plus does commentary on NPR.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

When I was recently going over a list of some of the books I have loved forever and will doubtless read dozens of times, the authors were all women, and the books all fall into the young adult/juvenile fiction kind of category. *shrug* I'd forgotten about Lloyd Alexander, though . . . Do you have a copy of Westmark? That's one I haven't reread in ages.

Westmark

[magid.livejournal.com]

I have it. Let me know when you'd like to borrow it (during the semester or after, in other words :-). You know that there are sequels to it? I have one of them, and I think there's another, too.

It makes sense to me that books you've loved for ages would be young adult ones; you'd've read them earlier than adult fiction.

Re: Westmark

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Anytime would be fine :) Isn't "The Kestrel" a sequel? Or is that part of another series? I think I read them last in middle school (eep).

Er, yeah . . . *duh* I guess that does make sense. Though I consider them favorites even over more adult stuff (some of Heinlein, f'rinstance) that I read at about the same time.

Re: Westmark

[magid.livejournal.com]

I think The Kestrel is a sequel, and not the one I have (I need to go shopping; book shopping doesn't even require trying on all those plaid clothes my mom kept shoving through the curtain at me. Oh. Yeah. Grown up now (nominally), so no longer take my mom when I get clothes. Still, no trying on stuff.). I'm feeling lazy, like I don't want to rummage through the books in the other room to see exactly which book (other than Westmark) I have.

I haven't read any Heinlein, so I can't speak to that, exactly, but I did love Hitchhiker's, and pretty much everything by Wodehouse, and some other stuff, but some books are more... timeless than others. (Notice the careful lack of clothing analogy here. :-)