In the late 1930s, White turned his hand to children's fiction on behalf of a niece, Janice Hart White. His first children's book, Stuart Little, was published in 1945, and Charlotte's Web appeared in 1952. Stuart Little initially received a lukewarm welcome from the literary community due in part to the reluctance to endorse it by Anne Carroll Moore, the retired but still powerful children's librarian from the New York Public Library. However, both books went on to receive high acclaim.
White received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the U.S. professional children's librarians in 1970, recognizing his "substantial and lasting contributions to children's literature". At the time it was awarded every five years.That year he was also the U.S. nominee and a highly commended runner-up for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, as he was again in 1976 Also in 1970, White's third children's novel was published, The Trumpet of the Swan. In 1973 it won the Sequoyah Award from Oklahoma and the William Allen White Award from Kansas, both selected by students voting for their favorite book of the year.
In 2012 School Library Journal sponsored a survey of readers which identified Charlotte's Web as top children's novel ("fictional title for readers 9–12)". The librarian who conducted it observed that "it is impossible to conduct a poll of this sort and expect [it] to be anywhere but .