In your opinion, what are the worst and best kid's books of all time?

I do not know any kids’ books.
But “Faust” by Goethe is pretty good.

Cat in the hat. Value tales. Choose your adventure series.

In my opinion, there are no best or worst kids’ books of all time, because even in one culture at one time and even for one child, books are different, and to me one thing that made them great was that they were very different from each other. At most, I might have had one favorite on any given day, but otherwise it’s impossible to pick one.

It’s also impossible to pick a worst one without suffering through many candidates, but the low end of my scale would include judgement-think indoctrination-attempting Christian books.

Some of my own favorites were:

The King’s Stilts (mid-ocean valley kingdom protected by trees protected from tree-eating birds by a cat patrol led by a king on stilts whose mood is therefore essential to the survival of the people, which is endangered by a fun-hating advisor who hides the king’s stilts!)

The Frog and Toad books.

Ferdinand

The Tin Tin books. (clever logical creative world-spanning adventures)

Arm in Arm was always a big hit with my kids.

Pokey Little Puppy was dog shit, as was all of those books that tried to teach obedience.

The worst might be Boris the Shitting Buffalo by Aaron Cleary. I haven’t read it.

(I just flagged this to push it back to editing. I changed my question in mid stream and forgot to change it from singular to plural. Also, I need a possessive apostrophe in “kid’s”)

I have got to get Ferdinand! I’ve never read it, but it keeps coming up over and over.

Was it the best or worst @Ihatelife123?

I LOVED Go Dogs Go as a kid! Especially when they’re playing in the tree. That was so cool.

I also loves Look Out For Pirates! when I was in elementary school.

I loved the Ramona and Beezus books by Beverly Cleary, though they may be a bit dated these days. The Little House series, Encyclopedia Brown, The Great Brain, Pippi Longstocking, and the Harry Potter books are outstanding. My personal favorite as a kid was Harriet The Spy. The follow up books, The Long Secret and Sport are good as well.

As I now have an 8 year old niece, I am looking at books for her. I recently found a series about a girl name Jasmine Toguchi. I have read the first one and sent it to her for Valentine’s Day. Beatrice Zinker Upside Down Thinker was a book I got for her for Christmas. She enjoyed it, so I will take that as a good review.

I have several favorites in common with those already mentioned.
Ferdinand, which I loved as a child, which I bought for my daughter when I learned her school did not have it. She was in junior high when I became aware that she had never read it, but I got it anyway. She likes it.

Ramona and Beezus are good.

Junie B. Jones are fun stories.

Some of the Dr. Seuss books qualify for the ability to draw the imagination and adventure to children, and even to help their parents remember the joy of fantasy.

Judy Blume is one of my favorite children’s authors. She does exactly the opposite of Seuss in that she puts some of life’s difficult realities into the safe environment of a story, so children can have a medium for searching their feelings and accepting difficult situations. I know that she was personally responsible for educating numerous preteens about puberty, and some myths dispelled, with Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Back when most schools were failing to teach about physical changes, kids were picking up the book and passing it around. I read it when our school library had a two month waiting list. A friend of mine let me read it while she had it checked out so I wouldn’t have to wait so long.
Judy had the nerve to present facts and myths in gentle form when most grown ups whispered to each other and wouldn’t talk with their kids much at all.

I feel unqualified to answer this question because I’m at least 30 years out of date on children’s literature. The best I could do would be to list favorites from when my own kids were kids.

Best: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish.
Worst: Amy of the little golden books that have, like, two or three words per page. I detested having to read them to my kids.

Well, have at it @stanleybmanly! I didn’t word this from the view point of the child. Wrinkle In Time? Just So Stories? Black Stallion series?

Ok. Those are all top notch. I really don’t want to be forced to pick.

* Sitting on @stanleybmanly, pulling his hair and pinching him to force him to pick! *

Rather than best or worst, I will list my favorite book when I was around 7 and the books my kids would demand at bedtime when they were 3–5. Mine was a collection of short stories titled “The Lively City O’Ligg” And both kids had this fixation on the Richard Scary “Busy Busy World” series of books.