Ordering Children's Books Trivia Quiz

When I say 'oldest', I mean really old as these tales are attributed to a slave from Ancient Greece who lived from around 620 until 564 BCE. The stories remain well known and include tales such as 'The Tortoise and the Hare' and 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf'.

The first story teaches the moral that taking your time is sometimes the better option, as the tortoise wins a race against the hare who takes a rest and falls asleep during the race. In the other story, the boy raised too many false alarms about wolves attacking his sheep so that when it really happened nobody believed him.

Daniel Defoe was the author who wrote about a shipwrecked man named Robinson Crusoe who finds himself washed ashore on an island. In the story, he has already undergone several mishaps and adventures, but this is the part of the story which most people remember.

Crusoe is destined to spend nearly thirty years on the island, where he rescues a slave from a group of cannibals and names him 'Friday' from which we get the expression 'Man Friday' for a helper. The story is a moral one of how Crusoe finds faith through reading the Bible and is eventually saved from the island.

The German brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, set about collecting traditional fairy tales and published the first edition of them in 1812. A second set followed in 1815, with more than two hundred having been amassed by 1857. The stories were translated into English and include such well known tales as 'Hansel and Gretel', 'Little Red Riding Hood' and 'Rapunzel'.

Charles Kingsley wrote this story for children, which had the sub-title 'A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby'. The story involves a young chimney sweep, called Tom, who is transformed into a water-baby when he falls into a river. The story has themes of Christianity and redemption although the author also takes aim at the evils of child labour and mistreatment of the poor.

Rudyard Kipling wrote 'The Jungle Book' as a series of stories, with most of them set in India, where he was born and spent his first few years. He and his younger sister were sent to England at the ages of six and three to live as boarders in a home where he was not treated kindly.

This is reflected in his stories about Mowgli, the boy brought up by wolves. The animals in the story are given human characteristics, with Baloo being the bear who teaches Mowgli to survive while Shere Khan is the evil tiger who tries to kill Mowgli.

Eleanor H Porter wrote the story of 'Pollyanna', the eternally optimistic child who is sent to live with her aunt when she is orphaned. Pollyanna copes with life by finding something to be glad about in everything that happens to her, and encourages everyone she meets to adopt the same attitude in life. Even her stern and severe aunt eventually softens.

Margret and H. A. Rey created the character of 'Curious George' in their first book about him, in 1941. George is a monkey who is captured in Africa by 'The Man in the Yellow Hat' who takes him to live in America. The series of stories about George and his adventures include him getting a job, learning to ride a bicycle and making a visit to a hospital, mostly situations which younger children can relate to.

'The Cat in the Hat' is just one of the stories written for children by Theodor Geisel, better known by his pen name of Dr Seuss. The story about the cat who causes havoc in the home of two children while their mother is out is very popular and was turned into a film. Dr Seuss also wrote 'Green Eggs and Ham' and 'Fox in Socks' among many other children's books.

The first 'Harry Potter' book came out in 1997 and the final one, called 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows', in 2007. 'The Prisoner of Azkaban' was the third book, and covers the escape of Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, from the notorious prison .

At first, Harry is suspicious of Sirius but soon learns the truth about both Sirius and the death of his parents. It is in this book that we meet Buckbeak, the hippogriff, who is saved from death by Harry and his friends and then saves Sirius by flying him to safety.

Rick Riordan has updated Greek mythology for young adult readers in his series of novels called 'Percy Jackson & the Olympians'. The first book in the series, 'The Lighting Thief', introduces the main characters of Percy Jackson (Perseus in myth), Grover (a satyr) and Annabeth (daughter of Athena). Even their teacher, called Mr Brunner, is revealed to be Chiron, the wise centaur from Greek myth.