Ah, nostalgia. There is little that sparks off a conversation between strangers quite as effectively as harking back to shared childhood memories.

There is the inevitable ice-breaker of children’s television. Or, in the case of a newly trending hashtag on Twitter, beloved children’s books.

Simon Smith, headteacher of East Whitby Academy in North Yorkshire, began it all, with a call to Twitter users to tweet their favourite children’s books under the hashtag #favechildrenslit:

Immediately, Twitter users - most of them teachers - were volunteering the obvious choices:  

And then there were the equally obvious - but more parent-pleasingly literary - choices:

As quickly became clear, books can be loved not merely in the abstract - words on a page, any page - but also in very specific, well-thumbed editions:

After all, for teachers of a certain vintage, nothing says “Edwardian classic” quite like a 1980s cover design:

But books have sentimental value not only because of when and where we read them, but also because they may have been read before by people we love:

In fact, with so much influencing their choices, many teachers found there was no shortage of books about which to wax lyrical: one tweeted 11 entries in her list of top-10 books. Instead, they were faced with another problem:

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and like Tes on Facebook