儿童节特供：11本最伟大的英文童书

什么样的书才能称得上最伟大的儿童书呢？英国广播公司（BBC）文化频道的编辑采访了几十位世界各地的书评人和童书编辑，让他们列出自己心目中针对10岁以下儿童最好的英文儿童读物。这些评论人士和编辑一共列出了151本书，而下面的这11本在他们的推荐中多次出现。我们相信，这些书还会继续陪伴一代又一代儿童成长。

11. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie (1935)
《草原上的小木屋》（1935年），萝拉•英格斯•怀德着

Wilder’s nine classic frontier novels were inspired by her own 19th Century childhood. She was raised in a pioneer family, and traveled through the Midwest by covered wagon. Wilder writes with authentic detail of a little girl living “in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs" with her parents, two sisters and their dog, Jack. "As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods. There were no houses.” Wilder’s accounts have made daily life on the frontier vivid for generations. (Credit: Harper)
怀德的9部经典边疆小说都是在她自己19世纪的童年生活启发下写成的。她成长于一个拓荒者家庭，曾经坐着大篷车横穿美国中西部。怀德用逼真的细节描述了一个小女孩跟她的父母、两个姐姐和一条名叫杰克的狗生活在“威斯康星州大森林里的一座灰色小木屋里”。“一个人走一天、一个星期、或者整整一个月，也走不出这片森林。一个房子也看不到，只有森林。” 怀德的作品为一代又一代儿童生动描述了边疆地区的日常生活。（来源：哈珀柯林斯出版社）

10. Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle In Time (1962)
《时间的皱纹》（1962年），麦德琳•兰歌着

Meg Murry’s father, a time traveling physicist, has disappeared. One night she, her precocious younger brother Charles Wallace and her mother – “a scientist and a beauty as well” – have an unexpected visitor. "Wild nights are my glory," the strange Mrs Whatsit tells them. "I just got blown off course.” She refers to a tesseract, a fifth dimension that allows travel through time and space. With her brother and a high school friend, Calvin, Meg sets out across the universe to find her father. Their confrontation with IT, the disembodied conformist intelligence that casts a shadow over the universe, is a noirish Cold War touch. L’Engle’s Newbery Award-winning book was an early foray into science fiction for younger readers, inspired in part by Einstein’s theory of relativity. Meg was a first in literature: a nerdy girl whose intelligence was matched by her powerful love for her family. (Credit: Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
梅格•默里的父亲是一位能够穿越时光的物理学家，他不见了。一天晚上，她和她亲爱的弟弟查尔斯•华莱士，还有她的母亲，一位美女科学家，迎来了一位不速之客。这位奇怪的“什么”夫人跟他们说：“狂野的夜晚是我的荣耀。我刚刚被吹离了航线。”她指的是超立方体，能够让人穿越时空的五维空间。梅格带着弟弟和高中同学凯文穿越宇宙去寻找父亲。他们与IT的对峙其实是在用黑色手法表现冷战。IT是一个没有肉体、循规蹈矩的智能设备，它给整个宇宙罩上了一层阴影。兰歌的这部作品灵感来源于爱因斯坦的相对论，曾经摘得纽伯瑞儿童文学奖，同时也是针对青少年读者科幻作品的早期尝试。梅格是文学世界里第一个：智商与其对家人强烈的爱相匹配的怪咖女孩。（来源：法劳•斯特劳斯•吉罗出版公司）

9. Ursula K Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)
《地海巫师》（1968年），厄休拉•勒奎恩着

A young boy known as Sparrowhawk saves his village with a smattering of magic he learned from his aunt, a local witch. Apprenticed to the mage Ogion the Silent, and renamed Ged, he begins his training as a sorcerer. Le Guin’s exploration of the consequences of Ged’s misfires and temptations while at a school for wizards, his struggles with dragons and his inner demons, reshaped fantasy storytelling’s concepts of good and evil. Gradually, Ged gains wisdom as he faces his challenges. "He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun." "To me Le Guin’s story is about learning your craft as a writer, the long and painful struggle for mastery of both your art and yourself, written in astounding prose," says Amanda Craig, author and reviewer for the New Statesman and the Daily Telegraph. (Credit: Parnassus Press)
一位名叫雀鹰的少年凭借从女巫姨妈那里学到的一点法术拯救了他的村庄。后来他给巫师“沉默的欧吉安”做学徒，师父欧吉安给他改名为“格得”，自那以后他就开始学习做巫师。勒奎恩对于格得在巫师学院失手遭反噬以及面对的种种诱惑，他与龙族以及自己内心的恶魔做斗争的描写，重新定义了奇幻小说的善恶概念。渐渐地，格得在面对挑战的过程中智慧见长。“经历了一番艰难困苦后，他现在明白，他的使命从来不是要撤销他所种下的果，而是要把他做的事坚持到底。”“对我而言，勒奎恩的故事讲的是作为一个作家如何磨炼你的写作技巧，她用令人惊叹的文字告诉我们，达到艺术和个人境界的高峰需要经过一番漫长而痛苦的挣扎，”《新政治家周刊》和《每日电讯报》撰稿人及评论家阿曼达•克雷格说。（来源：帕那色斯出版社）

8. Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
《查理和巧克力工厂》（1964年），罗尔德•达尔着

The critics’ poll nominated five of Roald Dahl’s children’s books – the most by any author. Poet and book critic Tess Taylor calls his work “rollicking, funny, scary, humane and magical.” New York Times columnist Carmela Ciuraru says, “It seems impossible to choose just one favourite by Dahl, arguably the greatest children's book author of all time, but he is at his most delightful, imaginative and mischievous in this 1964 classic.” Dahl’s most popular among the five nominated is the story of Charlie Bucket, his Grandpa Joe, the Oompa-Loompas and the five golden tickets that take Charlie inside the factory of Willy Wonka, “the most amazing, the most fantastic, the most extraordinary chocolate maker the world has ever seen!” “Something crazy is going to happen now, Charlie thought. But he wasn’t frightened. He wasn’t even nervous. He was just terrifically excited.” (Credit: Penguin Books)
在书评人士的提名中，罗尔德•达尔儿童书就有5本，是作品得到提名最多的作家。诗人、书评家苔丝•泰勒将达尔的作品描述为“欢乐、有趣、吓人、人道、神奇”。《纽约时报》专栏作家卡梅拉•丘拉鲁说：“达尔可能是有史以来最伟大的儿童读物作家。在达尔的作品中不可能只选出一部最喜欢的，但这部1964年的经典作品是他的巅峰之作，是他最欢乐、最具想象力，也最调皮的一部作品。”这个关于查理•巴克特、他的爷爷乔、奥柏伦柏人和五张威利•旺卡巧克力工厂金参观券的故事是达尔被提名的五部作品中最受欢迎的。“这是世界有史以来最惊人、最奇妙、最非凡的巧克力工厂！”“现在要发生一些疯狂的事儿了，查理想。但他没有恐惧。他甚至没有紧张。他只是激动得不得了。”（来源：企鹅出版社）

7. AA Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)
《小熊维尼》（1926年），AA米尔恩着

Milne named the characters in his classic children’s book after his own son Christopher Robin, his cuddly teddy bear, his stuffed animals Piglet, Tigger, the donkey Eeyore and others. Christopher and Pooh wander through the Hundred Acre Wood not unlike the forest near Milne’s home in East Sussex. His first adventure sends him up a tree buzzing with bees, singing a little song to himself: “Isn’t it funny how a bear likes honey…” And the adventures continue, narrated with sweet grace by a father who includes his son and his son’s world in every new plot twist. A playwright and contributor to Punch, Milne will be forever known as the creator of the perfect read-aloud nursery tale. (Credit: Dutton Books)
米尔恩用他的儿子和儿子玩具的名字来给这本经典童书里的人物命名：小男孩克里斯多夫•罗宾、可爱的泰迪熊维尼、毛绒玩具小猪、跳跳虎、毛驴屹耳等等。克里斯多夫和维尼•噗经常闲逛的百亩森林和米尔恩在英格兰东萨西克斯郡的家附近的森林也很像。米尔恩的儿子的第一次冒险是爬上一棵蜜蜂嗡嗡飞的树，自娱自乐地唱着一支小曲：“熊爱吃蜂蜜，这是不是很有趣……”冒险故事在书中延续了下去，父亲很有爱地把儿子和儿子的世界写进了每个新的故事情节。作为一名剧作家和《笨趣》杂志的撰稿者，米尔恩将作为这本完美的床头幼儿读物的创作者而永远被世人铭记。（来源：达顿出版社）