The five writers who have occupied the post of children’s laureate have chosen their seven favourite children’s books.

The choices were made by Quentin Blake, Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Rosen to mark the tenth anniversary of the children’s laureateship.

The idea for the Children’s Laureateship came from a conversation between Ted Hughes, then the Poet Laureate, and Michael Morpurgo. The post is intended to honour the writer’s achievement and to promote children’s literature at a time when many writers fear storytelling is being undermined in schools.

Quentin Blake was the first children’s laureate and the successor to Michael Rosen, who is currently in the post, will be announced on 9 June.

The children’s laureate children’s book choices are as follows:

Quentin Blake

• Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain by Edward Ardizzone
• Queenie the Bantam by Bob Graham
• The Box of Delights by John Masefield
• Rose Blanche by Ian McEwan and Roberto Innocenti
• Five Children and It by E. Nesbit
• Snow White by Josephine Poole
• Stuart Little by E. B. White

Jacqueline Wilson

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge
• The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnett
• The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
• Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
• Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers

Michael Morpurgo

• Five Go to Smuggler’s Top by Enid Blyton
• Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
• A Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde

Anne Fine

• The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
• Absolute Zero by Helen Cresswell
• Just William by Richmal Crompton
• Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson
• Lavender’s Blue by Kathleen Lines
• A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White

Michael Rosen

• Clown by Quentin Blake
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner
• Not Now, Bernard by David McKee
• Fairy Tales by Terry Jones
• Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear by Andy Stanton
• Daz 4 Zoe by Robert Swindells