Pirates, shipwrecks, voyages into the unknown, floods and mysterious strangers. Boats provide a useful function in children’s books. Over the next few months I’ll be writing about my fifty favourite adventures about boats.

From fantastical nautical epics to salty graphic yarns, we’ll see how these stories form a central strand of children’s literature, and also learn more than is strictly necessary about blige, ballast, binnacles and barnacles. And I promise, no more iffy seafaring analogies.

50 Books About Boats (in no particular order)

1. The Book of Dust Vol. 1 – La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
2. Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor by Mervyn Peake
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
4. Comet in Moominland by Tove Jansson
5. The Minnow on the Say by Philippa Pearce
6. Nightbirds over Nantucket by Joan Aiken
7. Shackleton’s Journey by William Grill
8. Mr Gumpy’s Outing by John Burningham
9. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
10. Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain by Edward Ardizzone
11. Where the Wild things Are by Maurice Sendak
12. Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson
13. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
14. Asterix and the Great Crossing by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo
15. The Farthest Shore (Earthsea 3) by Ursula K. Le Guin
16. Five on a Treasure Island by Enid Blyton
17. The House that Sailed Away by Pat Hutchins
18. The Secret of Black Rock by Joe Todd Stanton
19. Tintin – The Crab with the Golden Claws by Herge
20. Lost and Found Oliver Jeffers
21. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graheme
22. Rivers at Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston
23. The Murderer’s Ape by Jakob Wegelius
24. Captain Pugwash by John Ryan
25. Tales of the Black Freighter by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
26. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
27. The Green Ship by Quentin Blake
28. The Story of the Map by Roger Duvoisin
29. The Storm Whale in Winter by Benji Davies
30. The Real Boat by Marina Aromshtam
31. The Cow Who Fell in the Canal by Peter Spier
32. Mr Miniscule and the Whale by Julian Tuwim and Bohdan Butenko
33. The Ship that Flew by Hilda Lewis
34. Stuart Little by E.B. White
35. The Little Captain by Paul Biegel
36. Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo
37. Lightship by Brian Floca
38. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
39. A Story Like the Wind by Gill Lewis
40. The Adventures of Uncle Lubin by W. Heath Robinson
41. The Marvels by Brian Selznick
42. Journey trilogy by Aaron Becker
43. Floodland by Marcus Sedgwick
44. Dougal’s Deep Sea Diary by Simon Bartram
45. The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear
46. The Arrival by Shaun Tan
47. A Boy and a Bear in a Boat by Dave Shelton
48. Yellow Kayak by Nina Laden and Melissa Castrillon
49. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
50. A First Book of the Sea by Nicola Davies and Emily Sutton

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Is your favourite boat missing from this list? Let’s have a heated debate below the line.