Both of those became known through the TV adaptations. Ingalls-Wilder is less popular than she was in the 80s. Montgomery is also less popular than she was in the 90s, in Québec (she's anglo-Canadian, if not for the TV series she probably wouldn't be read at all). Both are back in demand, I suspect because the moms (more than the dads, though both my brother and me read "Little House" who grew up on those now have kids.

I'm surprised about Laura Ingalls. She's a full-load of those American clichés European love so much. I thought the TV show had a lot of success in France .



I know my brother would rather rank them Lukcy Luke, Asterix, Tintin, then Spirou, Yoko Tsuno, Achille Talon, Gaston Lagaffe.

He likes the more recent stuff too. Some are more graphic novels. I know he has Shaun Tan, as I gave it to him.



I think there's too many for a list of 50 books. Of course if the kids like a book, they'll look at the others from the same author.



There are tons, really. In Québec the genre thrives since the early 90s and those books were bought in France after HP. There are series in France too.

We don't know them so much because there's been nothing like the anglo-saxon "breakthrough" of those books among an adult readership (and of course, we were not raised with them, as anglo-saxons were with Lewis, Dahl etc). Most of those I can name I can because I've worked on the movie or tv adaptations.



Alas, the big disadvantage of these books is that their form is dated. Today's kids wants much faster paced storytelling. Publishers ask the authors to have an eventful start from page 1 - literally (you're not even allowed a kind of prologue anymore - it can kill an otherwise excellent book with the kids). Set up chapters (which have been turned into exposition/character development/introduction of side characters) have been moved from the opening chapters to beyond the fourth or fifth or more. Kids don't enjoy them or care for them until the story has them solidly gripped. According to a famous French publisher (retired, from J'Aime Lire), beginnings are the part the editors have the writers rework the most when manuscripts are bought. This came (in part, it's started earlier) from analysis of Harry Potter's success and the success of other kids's books (not from the financial perspective as such but by pedagogues aiming to find ways to make kids read more.).

Verne is compelling once the kids get into the story, but apparently it's now terribly hard to make them pass his numerous set-up chapters and descriptions at the beginning, and teachers/parents who want their kids to read Verne are advised to read the first chapters with them, and anticipate the adventures to come to build-up some anticipation, or else the kids will get bored with the book before it gets there. Apparently it's TV writing that sparked this evolution in expectations about the way a story should be told (we see it in a lesser measure among adults, just look for e.g. at the way the younger generations of readers get impatient with Jordan's old-fashioned storytelling. To hear them speak, he goes on for pages with dress descriptions, when in truth they rarely go beyond a sentence (or a paragraph for other descriptions - with few exceptions like the few pages describing EF or Caemlyn), and collected together would not even fill the pages of more than two-three chapters, for the whole series. Hard to believe these people would still have the patience for writers like Flaubert, Austen, let alone Proust).