In a 2006 list for the Royal Society of Literature, author J. K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter books) named Charlie and the Chocolate Factory among her top ten books that every child should read.[31] A fan of the book since childhood, film director Tim Burton wrote: "I responded to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because it respected the fact that children can be adults."[32][33]
A 2004 study found that it was a common read-aloud book for fourth-graders in schools in San Diego County, California.[34] A 2012 survey by the University of Worcester determined that it was one of the most common books that UK adults had read as children, after Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Wind in the Willows.[35]
Groups who have praised the book include:
- New England Round Table of Children's Librarians Award (US, 1972)
- Surrey School Award (UK, 1973)[36]
- Read Aloud BILBY Award (Australia, 1992)[37]
- Millennium Children's Book Award (UK, 2000)
- The Big Read, ranked number 35 in a BBC survey of the British public to identify the "Nation's Best-loved Novel" (UK, 2003)[38]
- National Education Association, listed as one of "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children" based on a poll (US, 2007)[39]
- School Library Journal, ranked 61 among all-time children's novels (US, 2012)[40]
In the 2012 survey published by SLJ, a monthly with primarily US audience, Charlie was the second of four books by Dahl among their Top 100 Chapter Books, one more than any other writer.[40] Time magazine in the US included the novel in its list of the 100 Best Young-Adult Books of All Time; it was one of three Dahl novels on the list, more than any other author.[41] In 2016 the novel topped the list of Amazon's best-selling children's books by Dahl in Print and on Kindle.[42] In 2023, the novel was ranked by BBC at no. 18 in their poll of "The 100 greatest children's books of all time".[43]
Although the book has always been popular and considered a children's classic by many literary critics, a number of prominent individuals have spoken unfavourably of the novel over the years.[44] Children's novelist and literary historian John Rowe Townsend has described the book as "fantasy of an almost literally nauseating kind" and accused it of "astonishing insensitivity" regarding the original portrayal of the Oompa-Loompas as African black pygmies, although Dahl did revise this in later editions.[45] Another novelist, Eleanor Cameron, compared the book to the sweets that form its subject matter, commenting that it is "delectable and soothing while we are undergoing the brief sensory pleasure it affords but leaves us poorly nourished with our taste dulled for better fare."[30] Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in support of this assessment in a letter to The Horn Book Review, saying that her own daughter would turn "quite nasty" upon finishing the book.[46] Dahl responded to Cameron's criticisms by noting that the classics that she had cited would not be well received by contemporary children.[47]
