Children's Books That Defined an Era

When The Guardian requested that readers vote on the books that defined each successive era of the 20th century, that got Monica Edinger thinking. Asked she recently:

"...would it be possible (or has it been done already?) to come up with similarly defining children’s books of the various 20th century decades?"

Chall-onge!

My boss came up with the following:

1900s: Wizard of Oz
1910s: Anne of Green Gables
1920s: Millions of cats
1930s: Caddie Woodlawn
1940s: Curious George
1950s: Cat in the Hat
1960s: Snowy Day
1970s: A tossup between Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret and The Outsiders
1980s: Arnold Lobel’s Fables
1990s: Harry Harry Harry [he means Mr. Potter]
2000s: Man Who Walked Between the Towers

Not bad. Not bad at all. I mean, it really all comes down to how you want to define said eras. If you want to show how the course of children's literature has changed over the years, this is a darn good collection. Personally, my sole objections lie with the 80s and 2000s. My boss explained that Fables was one of the few titles he was familiar with that really delved into the notion of making fables accessible in a quite format (or something to that effect). As for Gerstein's book, it's impossible to get a hold on changes in kidlit publishing in this particular century. I might opt for Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus since Mr. Mo is particularly good at wrangling the old marketing machine. Pigeon sort of defines how it is that we're selling books to kids these days. But if I wanted to be snarky, I guess I could find a book covered head to toe in glitter and spangles and say that IT was the defining book (The Fancy Nancy ripoffs, perhaps?) but I could never be so cruel.