Heroes and heroin: the 10 greatest novels for children

One is a cosy bedtime read about a family of tiny people who live beneath the floor; another takes you into the world of a 14-year-old heroin user; and a third enacts an elaborate fantasy of demons and witch-clans.

They are among 10 books today nominated as the most important children's novels of the past 70 years, and encompass gritty themes of murder, war and illness as well as the deeds of fairies, angels and strange beings.

Philip Pullman's Northern Lights was chosen alongside classics such as Mary Norton's The Borrowers and Alan Garner's The Owl Service by judges of the CILIP Carnegie Medal for children's literature, as a kind of "Carnegie of Carnegies" to celebrate its 70th anniversary.

The list includes Melvin Burgess's Junk, about young heroin users who run away to live in a squat, which won the Carnegie Medal in 1996.

Other groundbreaking novels include Eve Garnett's 1937 novel The Family From One End Street, the first book of its kind to portray a working-class family.

The most recent book on the list is by the first-time novelist Jennifer Donnelly, who won in 2003 for A Gathering Light, about a murder in 1906 in New York.

The judges defended the omission of past winners such as Anne Fine, a former children's laureate who has won the award twice, as well as CS Lewis, who won in 1956 for The Last Battle.

Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust and a member of the judging panel, said the list was based on the quality of writing of one book, rather than an entire body of works by an author. "They were chosen on the excellence of the writing and we thought these were the most excellent books of the past 70 years," he said.

He praised Pullman's novel as an "extraordinary work which combines classical allusions, has echoes of Paradise Lost and uses parallel worlds", as well as those of Garnett, Norton and Robert Westall's The Machine Gunners, which is set in wartime Britain. Mr Douglas said that the best kind of children's literature was able to deal with real-world themes, such as Junk, as well as creating rich fantasy worlds, a duality that was reflected in the choice of shortlisted books.

"It's certainly a very important function of literature to give children a framework to explore the world, but the fantasy worlds of Pullman and Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden are just as important in terms of imagining worlds and laying the foundations for creativity in adult life," he said.

Burgess said that he remembered the controversy around his shortlisted work: "There was a huge amount of publicity when I won the Carnegie for Junk - a lot of it negative - but the way the librarians stood behind the book was fantastic. They pushed the door open for something that they knew was likely to cause a fuss."

Meanwhile, the shortlist for this year's Carnegie Medal, also announced today, included two first-time novelists, Siobhan Dowd, for A Swift Pure Cry, and Ally Kennen's Beast, as well as Anne Fine's The Road of Bones; Meg Rosoff's Just in Case; Marcus Sedgwick's My Swordhand is Singing, and Kevin Brooks' The Road of the Dead.

Carnegie of Carnegies shortlist

* SKELLIG David Almond (won in 1998)
A tale of a creature beneath the garage

* JUNK Melvin Burgess (1996)
The lives of young heroin users

* STORM Kevin Crossley-Holland (1985)
Girl discovers the secrets of a marsh

* A GATHERING LIGHT Jennifer Donnelly (2003)
Novel about a real murder

* THE OWL SERVICE Alan Garner (1967)
A terrifying legend re-emerges

* THE FAMILY FROM ONE END STREET Eve Garnett (1937)
Portrait of a working-class family

* THE BORROWERS Mary Norton (1952)
Tiny people live beneath the floor

* TOM'S MIDNIGHT GARDEN Philippa Pearce (1958)
Adventures in a magical garden

* NORTHERN LIGHTS Philip Pullman (1995)
First of the trilogy His Dark Materials

* THE MACHINE-GUNNERS Robert Westall (1981)
Second World War novel