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The Definitive Parent's Guide to CBeebies: The 40 Best Shows

Whenever,   as happens periodically, some government wonk threatens to axe CBeebies there is an outpouring of emotion from exasperated parents the tenor of which can only be described as feral. As the wrangler of a four year old I watch more children's telly than anything else. Should you wish to know who got knocked out of Bake Off I couldn't tell you, but if you were wondering which of the toys was missing from the line-up on last Tuesday's Show Me Show Me I'm on it like a shot (is it just me or is it always Miss Mouse?) And maybe it's just Stockholm Syndrome but I've actually grown to love quite a lot of the channel's output. Not everything, by any means. There is a special place in hell reserved for the likes of Kazoops!, Kate and Mim Mim and Waffle the Wonder Dog (possibly the single worst thing to befall Western Civilization, ever). But, by and large, most of the shows have something about them, be they educational, heartwarming or just gloriously ...

The 100 Greatest Scary Movies

1.     The Exorcist/ William Friedkin (1973) 2.     The Shining/ Stanley Kubrick (1980) 3.     Psycho/ Alfred Hitchcock (1960) 4.     Alien/ Ridley Scott (1979) 5.     Halloween/ John Carpenter (1978) 6.     Night of the Living Dead/ George A. Romero (1968) 7.     Rosemary's Baby/ Roman Polanski (1968) 8.     Peeping Tom/ Michael Powell (1960) 9.     Bride of Frankenstein/ James Whale (1935) 10.   Jaws/ Steven Spielberg (1975) 11.   Don't Look Now/ Nicolas Roeg (1973) 12.   The Texas Chainsaw Massacre/ Tobe Hooper (1974) 13.   The Wicker Man/ Robin Hardy (1973) 14.   Suspiria/ Dario Argento (1977) 15.   Les Diaboliques/ Henri-Georges Clouzot (1955) 16.   Witchfinder General/ Michael Reeves (1968) 17.   The Silence of the Lambs/ Jonathan Demme (1991) 18....

100 Influential Children's Picture Books

Clever Bill/ William Nicholson (1926) Millions of Cats/ Wanda Gag (1928) The Little Engine That Could/ Watty Piper & Lois Lenski (1930) The Story Of Babar/ Jean de Brunhoff (1931) The Story Of Ferdinand/ Munro Leaf & Robert Lawson (1936) Orlando the Marmalade Cat: A Camping Holiday/ Kathleen Hale (1938) Madeline/ Ludwig Bemelmans (1939) Pat the Bunny/ Dorothy Kunhardt (1940) Caps For Sale/ Esphyr Slobodkina (1940) Make Way For Ducklings/ Robert McCloskey (1941) Curious George/ HA & Margret Rey (1941) The Little House/ Virginia Lee Burton (1942) The Little Train/ Graham Greene, Dorothy Craigie & Edward Ardizzone (1946) Goodnight Moon/ Margaret Wise Brown & Clement Hurd (1947) The Book About Moomin, Mymble & Little My/ Tove Jansson (1952) Miffy/ Dick Bruna (1955) Harold & the Purple Crayon/ Crockett Johnson (1955) Eloise/ Kay Thompson (1955) Tim All Alone/ Edward Ardizzone (1956) Harry the Dirty Dog/ Gene Zion & Margaret Bloy Graham...