Open thread: which children's books defined their decade?

Was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone the defining children’s book of the 1990s? And how central was Adrian Mole to the 1980s?

Here’s a poser: the first Harry Potter novel wasn’t published until June 1997, but by July 1999 - when the third in the sequence, The Prisoner of Azkaban, was released - JK Rowling’s wizarding series was making muggles of everyone who ever doubted it (a roll of dishonour that included several publishers and a fair few early critics).

The impact of the books was undeniably swift, global and galvanising, but can they – as the actor and writer Brandon Robshaw asserts in a blog over on our children’s books website - be the defining books of the 1990s, given how late in the decade they came into being?

Related: Which children's books sum up the decade they were published?

@GdnChildrensBks @BrandonRobshaw Agree with a number of the choices, but for me the 60s has to be the outstanding Paddington #Hardstare

1920s - an era of hardened WWI survivors reaching peaks & poles: Christopher Robin has his own Expotitions! @GuardianBooks @GdnChildrensBks

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