The Times newspaper published in mid-2013 a list of the top 50 ‘books that all children should read’, which included Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth (at 27). Of course all such lists reflect the preferred reading of the selection panel and it is good, indeed essential, to know who was on the panel. In this case it was: Amanda Craig (then Times children’s books critic), Lucy Coats (author), Wendy Cooling (founder of Bookstart), Tom Gatti (Times Saturday Review editor), Katherine Langrish (blogger and author), Anthony McGowan (author), and  Nicholas Tucker (children’s literature specialist). Their list:

1. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
2. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
3. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
4. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
5. Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
6. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
7. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
8. The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
9. The Iron Man by Ted Hughes
10. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner
11. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
12. Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
13. The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer
14. Just William by Richmal Crompton
15. Matilda by Roald Dahl
16. The Midnight Folk by John Masefield
17. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
18. Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
19. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
20. Stories for Children by Oscar Wilde
21. Hellbent by Anthony McGowan
22. The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban
23. Five Children and It by E. Nesbit
24. The Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne Jones
25.  The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr
26. The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White
27. The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
28. The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
29. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
30. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
31. The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss
32. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
33. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
34.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
35. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
36. One Dog and His Boy by Eva Ibbotson
37. The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier
38. The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate by Margaret Mahy
39. Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz
40. How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
41. Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin
42. The Borrowers by Mary Norton
43. The Snow-walker’s Son by Catherine Fisher
44. Holes by Louis Sachar
45. Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian
46. Kit’s Wilderness by David Almond
47. Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver
48. Vice Versa by F. Anstey
49. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
50. Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy by Lynley Dodd