Read all of Slate’s stories about the 25 Greatest Picture Books of the Past 25 Years.
On Oct. 8, 2010, the New York Times ran a story on its front page: “Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children.” As we interviewed children’s publishing professionals while compiling this list, several told us they remembered exactly where they were when they read this death knell for their industry. The Times wasn’t wrong: Sales were down, especially of new books. Once upon a time, an adult shopping for a child might have bought a classic they remembered from their own childhood, and also a new book, recommended by a bookseller. More and more, buyers just went for the classic—almost always Seuss or Sendak—and new books languished on the shelves.
But, feared a number of ambitious authors and illustrators, the art form’s struggles couldn’t simply be blamed (as the Times suggested) on achievement-obsessed adults pushing chapter books too early. Picture books were struggling artistically too. The next year, a group of 21 creators issued a picture-book manifesto. “WE BELIEVE,” the manifesto read, “we must cease writing the same book again and again.” Books for children should be “fresh, honest, piquant, and beautiful,” and unafraid to be odd: “Even books meant to put kids to sleep should give them strange dreams.” And, added the document, “WE CONDEMN … the amnesiacs who treasure unruly classics while praising the bland today.”
This call to arms had a ring of truth to it. When we became parents, we too initially gravitated toward the unruly classics we loved as children, while shying away from new picture books. There were just so many of them! The ones we saw on the front tables in bookstores all seemed to be authored by celebrities—or, worse, were branded tie-ins promoting movies and TV shows. How could any of them be as good as the books of our youth, let alone better?
But picture books have undergone a revolution in the past 25 years—one that was already underway before that Times obit, but which that manifesto helped spur along. The art form is now remarkably different from what it was when we were little.
To start with, a dramatically more varied cast of characters both stars in picture books and makes them. The industry, encouraged by activist organizations like We Need Diverse Books, has belatedly come to understand the value of making books that, in the words of the influential academic Rudine Sims Bishop, offer young readers not only “mirrors” of their own experience but “windows” into the lives of others. Stories by and about nonwhite, nonstraight people are now much more likely to appear in libraries and bookstores, become bestsellers, and win awards.
But other, less obvious changes have swept the art form as well. A turn-of-the-millennium boom in animation, led by Pixar, gave rise to more illustrators making a living as storytellers—and, frustrated by the machinations of Hollywood studios, telling their own stories in a simpler, more personal form. Creators, including many signatories to the 2011 manifesto, have become more interested in innovating within, and subverting, the picture-book form: shortening the text, breaking the fourth wall, and fostering reader interaction—encouraged, perhaps, by the success of a certain argumentative pigeon. Picture-book nonfiction has grown in popularity, becoming especially useful in classrooms—where older elementary and middle school students, often fans of now-commonplace graphic novels, find it crucial in accessing difficult historical topics. And, of course, celebrities have flocked to the picture book—with mostly lukewarm results, although at least one TV star has published an unalloyed work of ridiculous genius. You’ll find it on our list.
To make this guide, we surveyed more than a hundred authors, illustrators, librarians, booksellers, academics, and publishing pros. We ended up reading more than 200 books, for which we must fulsomely thank our local libraries. Our goal: to find the books that represent the best of these transformations, and to tell the story of an art form that responded to a front-page crisis with a new wave of inventive stories that respect the intelligence, playfulness, and widely differing experiences of young readers.
With each entry, we’re suggesting a few other, similar picture books also admired by our nominators—as well as a collection of similar books for older kids, read-alikes suggested by the children’s lit experts at the public library in Arlington, Virginia. We’ve gone deeper into exceptional picture books, asking the creators of three titles on our list to explain the decisions behind a single spread in their books. And we’ve tracked down the inspiration for the oldest book on our list—then the opinionated niece of an award-winning illustrator, now a young woman with fond memories of what a beloved picture book meant to her.
We hope that the next time you’re looking for a book to read aloud with your favorite young person, this package will help you find something new and surprising—and understand, a little better, how it came to be that way.
2000
Ian Falconer
Olivia
Written and illustrated by New Yorker artist and David Hockney protégé Ian Falconer, Olivia features understated and spare text, encouraging readers young and old to dwell on Falconer’s chic black-and-red illustrations. (Who can forget the two-page spread of Olivia’s sandcastle Chrysler Building, accompanied only by the words She got pretty good?) Falconer anticipated the trend of picture books offering parents high-culture Easter eggs, not only in the book’s De Stijl palette but with its reproductions of paintings by Degas and Pollock. But kids recognize themselves in Olivia too, and the book, for all its adult worldliness, stays locked in the piglet’s point of view. It’s a witty, miniaturist portrait of a precocious, aggravating, lovable little girl who feels entirely real—based, as she was, on Falconer’s affectionate observations of his own niece. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“In Olivia, Ian Falconer mastered the interplay of words and pictures, using simple line drawings, shadows, and pops of red paint to land each punch line. Falconer opened the door for what picture books could be; his humor, restrained illustration style, sparsity of text, and wit set the tone for picture books of the 21st century.” —Ariel Kaplowitz Hahn, academic, University of Michigan
“Despite Ian Falconer’s warning that Olivia is very good at wearing people out, Olivia is a book that never feels worn out, no matter how many times you’ve read it. Kids can relate to Olivia’s adventures, opinions, and daily routine, while there’s a good chance that their adult can laugh and sigh along with the challenges Olivia’s mom faces.” —Jashar Awan, author and illustrator (Every Monday Mabel)
If you liked this: It’s Only Stanley by Jon Agee, Hot Dog by Doug Salati
When you’re older: Dory Fantasmagory by Abby Hanlon, Clarice Bean, Utterly Me by Lauren Child
Dan Kois
Her Uncle Immortalized Her as a Pig. The Book Sold 10 Million Copies. It’s Been Quite an Adventure.
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2003
Mordicai Gerstein
The Man Who Walked Between the Towers
Before Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightwire walk between the Twin Towers became the subject of a documentary and a feature film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, it was this Caldecott-winning children’s book. The story of Petit’s daring stunt, from idea to setup to execution, is rendered in heart-stopping illustrations that double as a love letter to the buildings’ former presence in Lower Manhattan. One foldout takes the perspective of a bystander exiting the subway, looking all the way up the faces of the towers, and seeing the tiny little man on his walk in the sky. It’s enough to give a parent heart palpitations, while daring little listeners will enjoy the audacity of it all: Petit and his compatriots setting up the wire at night; Petit skipping to and fro high up in the air, evading groups of frustrated police officers. The final images double as a subtle memorial to 9/11, and—in their oblique but clear reference to a tragedy of just two years before—they presage picture books’ growing willingness to address challenging subjects: “In memory, as if imprinted in the sky, the towers are still there.” Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
If you liked this: We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade, Locomotive by Brian Floca
When you’re older: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, We Walked the Sky by Lisa Fiedler
2003
Mo Willems
Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
What’s the most frustrating word children hear every day? No. Effortlessly clever, this debut from the century’s picture-book king allows kids to say no to someone else: the Pigeon, whose incessant wheedling and begging will no doubt remind parents of … hmm, someone. The Pigeon has gone on to dozens of other adventures, but the real influence of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!—itself the subject of two years of Nos from publishers before Mo Willems, a Sesame Street animator and writer, got a yes—lies in the message its roughly drawn antihero conveyed to aspiring creators: Picture books don’t have to require hours and hours at the table, toiling away at pristine, gorgeous illustrations. Though Willems is certainly capable of producing polished, classic-picture-book art, the Pigeon’s success made it clear that an ingenious concept and sharp writing can make any book a smash. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
If you liked this: Stuck by Oliver Jeffers, Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin
When you’re older: Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea! by Ben Clanton, Klawde: Evil Alien Warlord Cat by Johnny Marciano, Emily Chenoweth, and Robb Mommaerts
Dan Kois
The Instant-Classic Picture Book That Forced Even the Most Serious Adults to Get Silly
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2009
Jerry Pinkney
The Lion & the Mouse
Parents who like to storytell alongside a near-wordless picture book will have a field day with this one, based on a classic Aesop tale. A lion spares a mouse’s life; later, the mouse saves the lion from a hunter’s trap. (Moral: Every kindness will be repaid.) In Jerry Pinkney’s version, only occasional text-rendered sound effects guide the reader, but the illustrations are so fun to lose yourself inside that you won’t miss the words. Pinkney’s lion, drawn in such rich and deep golds, browns, and yellows, dominates the pages of this Caldecott winner, but don’t sleep on the mouse and its babies, with their beady, adorable eyes, or the gorgeously rendered long-beaked birds, who sound their alarm as the noble lion is scooped up in the net. Picture books have long retooled folktales and fables. This one, with its minimal text and truly striking front cover, takes a very 21st-century leap of faith in the reader—and it pays off. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“From its iconic wordless front-cover image previewing Jerry Pinkney’s glorious naturalistic African Serengeti–set art to the back-cover reveal of the object of the lion’s gaze, this Caldecott winner is picture book–making at its finest.” —Elissa Gershowitz, editor in chief, the Horn Book Magazine, a century-old children’s lit journal
If you liked this: Wave by Suzy Lee, Wolf in the Snow by Matthew Cordell
When you’re older: The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo, Wilderlore: The Accidental Apprentice by Amanda Foody
2010
Laban Carrick Hill and Bryan Collier
Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave
David Drake, an enslaved man who lived in South Carolina in the 1800s, was a potter who made huge, beautiful jars and inscribed cryptic, poignant, humorous poems on the sides of some. We know about him because a number of those jars survived. Dave the Potter is about Drake’s process of making the jars: how his fellow workers gathered up clay and carried it into his shed, how he mixed it with water, how he worked 60-pound lumps of clay on his wheel as “the walls of the jar puffed up like a robin’s puffed breast,” watching carefully to see when to stop, before “its immense weight threatened collapse.” Bryan Collier lays textured images of Drake working the wheel over backgrounds depicting the rest of the enslaved workers in the field, perfectly showing—without the text ever needing to stipulate—how unusual Drake’s self-driven, expressive labor would have been, what a contrast to the rest of life on the plantation. The result is a thoughtful, beautiful example of the growing artfulness of picture-book nonfiction and biography—a book about craft that never leaves the essential context of slavery behind. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave models what the best nonfiction picture books can do—engage, inform, and transform the reader. Honoring Drake’s artistic capacity while acknowledging his enslaved status, sharing his poetry while revealing it was illegal for Dave to be literate, the book trusts its readers to understand a multidimensional view of a brilliant artist.” —Mary Ann Cappiello, academic, Lesley University
If you liked this: Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat by Javaka Steptoe, Thank You, Omu! by Oge Mora
When you’re older: You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen by Carole Boston Weatherford and Jeffery Boston Weatherford, The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights by Steve Sheinkin
2011
Hervé Tullet
Press Here
Press Here is a sophisticated interaction machine, the most successful of a number of recent books encouraging play within their elegantly designed pages. Children who like to participate actively in the reading process will love it, and adult readers will find it incredibly charming. Each page arranges primary-colored dots, and the text asks the listener to do different things to the dots: press all the yellow ones; tip the book to the left, then the right; shake them up. When you turn the page, the next spread shows the child—or children (this is a fun one for group story time)—how their actions have “changed” the dots’ configuration. There’s no moral to the story, just the fun of following along and laughing at Hervé Tullet’s cleverness. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“Absolutely beautiful, form-breaking, a gorgeous experience.” —B.J. Novak, actor, The Office, author (The Book With No Pictures)
“Press Here was the first of its kind to make use of the book as an object … beautifully, simply, and playfully executed.” —Oliver Jeffers, author and illustrator (Stuck, The Day the Crayons Quit)
If you liked this: Love by Damien Poulain, The Little Barbarian by Renato Moriconi
When you’re older: Leviathan by Jason Shiga, Greenglass House by Kate Milford
2012
Jacqueline Woodson and E.B. Lewis
Each Kindness
Every beat of this story is heartbreaking, but the end will leave you wrecked. National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson excels at writing about friendship and its difficulties, and at subtly showing how gender, race, and class work inside kids’ lives. In Each Kindness, the elementary school narrator tells us how a new girl named Maya comes into her class, gets instantly clocked as having no money, then tries to connect with the other girls—before, finally, moving away, without making a single friend. E.B. Lewis’ naturalistic illustrations of the narrator’s classmates snubbing Maya in the classroom and on the playground perfectly capture the particular body language of children of this age. The story is absolutely, unflinchingly honest about how mean children can be to those they perceive as powerless—and about how upset a kid can feel when they first realize that they, themselves, have been part of that cruelty. And Each Kindness isn’t afraid to stay sad to the end. In this, it feels like an issues-based YA novel in the guise of a picture book, a blend of approaches that’s perfect for starting conversations about friendship with an audience of early elementary kids. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“Each Kindness is a brave, revolutionary story that dares to end on regret. This beautifully inclusive book has inspired me and many other writers to take more risks in the picture-book form.” —Matt de la Peña, author (Last Stop on Market Street)
If you liked this: Watercress by Andrea Wang and Jason Chin, Boats for Papa by Jessixa Bagley
When you’re older: Drita, My Homegirl by Jenny Lombard, Restart by Gordon Korman
2012
Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen
Extra Yarn
Picture books have always retold, reinvented, or even fractured fairy tales, but it’s the rare book that can conjure a whole new fairy tale that feels as if it’s been around for centuries. That’s the appeal of Extra Yarn, about a little girl in a grim gray town who finds a magical box of colorful yarn that never runs out. Extra Yarn was the first collaboration between Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen, and it’s the template not only for their partnership but for an entire aesthetic that serves as a kind of counterweight to an increasingly issue-oriented publishing marketplace: deadpan comedy, gentle absurdity, and beautiful craft, all in service of a timeless story. And yet there’s more to this tale than simple whimsy: The book’s moral about the wonder of making something special for your community is underscored by Klassen’s artwork, with its origins in an actual thrift-store sweater whose texture he scanned. And the narrative’s elemental power grows and grows with the arrival of the Archduke—one of the silliest, meanest villains in recent memory, whose comeuppance is Barnett’s final canny reversal, as finely crafted as the rest of this beautiful book. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“Extra Yarn is a great example of a collab, highlighting the storytelling prowess of Mac Barnett and the graphic mastery, mixed with folk-art magic, of Jon Klassen. It’s just about a perfect story.” —Oliver Jeffers, author and illustrator (Stuck, The Day the Crayons Quit)
If you liked this: The Three Pigs by David Wiesner, After the Fall by Dan Santat
When you’re older: Finger Knitting Fun by Vickie Howell, Under the Egg by Laura Marx Fitzgerald
Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen
These Authors Hate “Best Of” Picture-Book Lists. We Asked Them to Judge Ours Anyway.
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2013
Dianna Aston and Sylvia Long
An Egg Is Quiet
Nonfiction picture books about science can be serious, introducing big topics like ocean pollution or climate change, but in the past 25 years, some of the best ones have been beautiful and clever—simply fun to look at, for kids who love nature and the adults who want to encourage their love. The visual appeal of the scientific drawings in this ode to eggs cannot be equaled. Any one spread describing the shapeliness, clever design, and “giving” nature of the egg could easily be turned into a poster you’d want to hang on your wall, but the two pages collecting the most colorful varieties of eggs are downright beautiful, and extremely calming to look down upon. Dianna Aston’s text provides just enough information, adding small turns of phrase that are fun to read—as when she tells us that seabirds, laying eggs on rock ledges, can depend on their pointy shape to keep them rolling around in “safe little circles, not off the cliff.” Kids will love looking at the page on camouflage, trying to spot the hidden egg, and will enjoy debating which egg is the most beautiful and well evolved for its purpose. There are, An Egg Is Quiet shows us, many contenders. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“An Egg Is Quiet is a master class in expository nonfiction, evoking wonder and surprise with its lyrical language and stunning illustrations, while simultaneously conveying scientific information in an engaging way and challenging readers’ ideas about what an egg is.” —Andrea Wang, author (Watercress)
If you liked this: Grand Canyon by Jason Chin, Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera by Candace Fleming and Eric Rohmann
When you’re older: Plants Can’t Sit Still by Rebecca Hirsch and Mia Posada, Skunked!: Calpurnia Tate, Girl Vet by Jacqueline Kelly
2014
B.J. Novak
The Book With No Pictures
Over the past 25 years, the picture book has become a reliable brand extender for the lazy celebrity, a chance for Madonna, Mario Lopez, or Bethenny Frankel to augment or tweak their image among free-spending parents while getting an illustrator to draw some cute art, preferably of a child version of the famous person. The Office actor B.J. Novak’s The Book With No Pictures, however, is not that kind of picture book. Instead, it’s an ingenious device designed to make children lose their minds with laughter, as adult readers are forced by the book’s puckish narrator to say things like “My only friend in the whole wide world is a hippo named Boo Boo Butt.” The Book With No Pictures is the perfect introduction to the idea that words—boring old words!—can be a lot of fun. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“This book shows how much fun you can have with words. I challenge anyone to read it aloud without laughing.” —Kate Reynolds, general book buyer, Colgate Bookstore, Hamilton, New York
If you liked this: Nanette’s Baguette by Mo Willems, I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen
When you’re older: The Book That No One Wanted to Read by Richard Ayoade and Tor Freeman, Inkheart trilogy by Cornelia Caroline Funke
2015
Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson
Last Stop on Market Street
A little boy and his grandmother ride the bus, and the little boy peppers her with complaints: “How come we don’t got a car?” “How come we always gotta go here after church?” This simple masterpiece of children’s literature—winner of the Newbery and a Caldecott Honor, and one of the highest vote-getters in our poll—is relatable to every kid who’s ever wondered why his friends’ families seem richer and more fun, while remaining committed to the specific story of one little boy, living in a city, raised by his grandma, taking the bus across town. Christian Robinson’s collages bring the city to gritty, colorful life, and the story’s final grace note brings things to a perfect close, showing us where the bus, and the book, was going all along. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“In Last Stop on Market Street, de la Peña and Robinson perform a wonderful magic trick, transforming a simple bus ride into a deeper journey that reveals the magic and beauty in everyday moments.” —Minh Lê, author (Drawn Together)
“Through empathy and art, de la Peña and Robinson have created one of the most moving picture books I’ve ever read.” —Jason Chin, author and illustrator (Grand Canyon)
If you liked this: Small in the City by Sydney Smith, A Different Pond by Bao Phi and Thi Bui
When you’re older: No Purchase Necessary by Maria Marianayagam, Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman and Judy Pedersen
Dan Kois
In Our Poll About the Best Picture Books of the Past 25 Years, One Got More Votes Than Any Other
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2016
Carson Ellis
Du Iz Tak?
Everyone in the picture-book world is in love with Du Iz Tak?, our leading vote-getter among writers and illustrators. Reading the argot Carson Ellis has created for her insect characters, you stay at arm’s length from this inscrutable, tiny transitory world. But even without understanding what they’re saying, you become invested in the story of a single meadow during a single summer. The insects guess what a green sprout might be, build a fort in it as it grows, watch the fort get covered in a web by a spider and fear that it is lost, then witness a bird carry the spider away—a feathery deus ex machina depicted in a gorgeous, terrifying spread that surprises you as much as the first great white rising out of the ocean in Jaws. When the plant sprouts a flower, the insects figure out what the plant is and say to one another: “Unk gladdenboot! Unk scrivadelly gladdenboot!” And, together, an adult and a child might begin to figure out what a “gladdenboot” might be. Du Iz Tak? succeeds entirely on its own terms, and those terms are utterly original. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“Du Iz Tak? IS the greatest picture book of the last 25 years, and I will die on that hill!!!” —Cece Bell, author and illustrator (El Deafo, Animal Albums From A to Z)
If you liked this: Twenty Questions by Mac Barnett and Christian Robinson, Mr. Fiorello’s Head by Cecilia Ruiz
When you’re older: Robot Dreams by Sara Varon, The Arrival by Shaun Tan, The Atlas of Languages: Words Around the World by Rachel Lancashire and Jenny Zemanek
2016
Adam Rex and Christian Robinson
School’s First Day of School
Many small children feel anxiety about starting school. Many picture books are published trying to help them come to terms with the transition. None, I’ll wager, are as innovative, comforting, and funny as School’s First Day of School, which, in its inside-out treatment of the first-day jitters, is never condescending to child or to parent. Frederick Douglass Elementary is a newly built school building, and it’s nervous. In bright, jaunty illustrations reminiscent of Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day, Christian Robinson shows the school being cleaned up by its janitor, who takes the place of a parent, talking Frederick Douglass Elementary through its apprehensions. “Don’t worry—you’ll like the children,” Janitor says, but Frederick Douglass Elementary isn’t sure. Through the school’s eyes, a typical first day in kindergarten unfolds: nervous kids, a fire alarm, lunchtime jokes, after-lunch art-making sessions, and, finally, the realization that maybe things might be OK. It’s a genius displacement tactic, walking young listeners through these emotions, while keeping reality at the perfect distance. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
If you liked this: I’m Sorry You Got Mad by Kyle Lukoff and Julie Kwon, The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson and Beth Krommes
When you’re older: Harry Versus the First 100 Days of School by Emily Jenkins, A First Time for Everything by Dan Santat
2016
Brendan Wenzel
They All Saw a Cat
A cat walks through the world. It’s just a normal housecat, with “whiskers, ears, and paws.” The cat encounters various other creatures: a fish, a mouse, a bee, a child. Each of them “sees” the cat, and in the spreads, the art shifts accordingly: The fish sees the cat as blurry and huge; the mouse sees the cat as a horror-show monster; the bee sees the cat as a pebbled mosaic; the child sees the cat as adorable and sweet, with huge anime eyes. This book is a simple yet profound exploration of perception and perspective. It teaches readers a lot about art, and about science, without using very many words at all. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“They All Saw a Cat is the sort of picture book that’s so smart, does what it does so simply and so well, that it can’t ever be done again.” —Jarrett Pumphrey, author and illustrator (The Old Truck)
“This book manages to celebrate the importance of seeing beyond one’s own limited perspective without being didactic. There is no cringeworthy ‘teachable moment’ here; lost in the delight of imagining ourselves into the next animal’s shoes, we glean, without being told, that there is no such thing as true ‘objectivity,’ and that all of us see the cat, and the world, through our limited points of view.” —Ariel Kaplowitz Hahn, academic, University of Michigan
If you liked this: Actual Size by Steve Jenkins, If You Come to Earth by Sophie Blackall
When you’re older: Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan, Invisible: A Graphic Novel by Christina Diaz Gonzalez and Gabriela Epstein
2017
Derrick Barnes and Gordon C. James
Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut
An energizing example of art made by Black artists for Black families, Crown takes the reader into a neighborhood barbershop for a tight fade, high/low/bald. Gordon James’ majestic oil paintings elevate the boy at the center of the book to the same level as the handsome dudes all around getting a shape-up, tapered sides, a crisp but subtle line. And Derrick Barnes’ language sings in Black children’s ears: “They’re going to have to wear shades when they look up to catch your shine.” The growth in publishing about the Black experience has produced any number of picture books, many of them artful and admirable, marking the accomplishments of famous Black role models. Crown is different: a self-assured celebration of everyday Black boyhood, manhood, and community, a testament not to the luminaries but to the prosaic yet formative moment when you leave the barbershop, fresh as anything, neck still stinging, feeling “magnificent. Flawless. Like royalty.” Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“The undeniable reverberations of strut and swagger that come with a truly great haircut just emanate off the pages of this intensely lyrical, brilliantly conceived picture book.” —Betsy Bird, librarian, blogger, reviewer, and podcaster focusing on children’s books
“Crown is both praise poem and artful storytelling infused with traditional Black history, contemporary community perspective, and revelatory, personal self-awareness. … The artist’s imagery is realistic yet magically expansive, leaving ample space for the reader’s imagination.” —Cheryl Willis Hudson, author, editor, and publisher (When I Hear Spirituals)
If you liked this: I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott and Sydney Smith, The Proudest Blue by Ibtihaj Muhammad, S.K. Ali, and Hatem Aly
When you’re older: Future Hero: Race to Fire Mountain by Remi Blackwood, Hip-Hop: The Beat of America by Jarrett Williams
2018
Jessica Love
Julián Is a Mermaid
The winner of a Stonewall Book Award, this debut explores the extravagant inner life of a little boy who dreams of dressing up as beautifully as the women he sees on the subway. Jessica Love’s fluid gouache artwork—cleverly painted on plain brown paper—makes Julián’s dreams a reality, and also creates an entire Brooklyn world all around him, full of street-corner grumps, giggling neighbors, and his stone-faced abuela. The story is hers as much as it’s Julián’s, as this skeptical woman comes to embrace her grandchild and his flamboyant soul—an openhearted message that renders absurd the many challenges and bans this book has endured since publication. One of the biggest recent stories in picture books is the growing censorship they face from right-wing extremists challenging children’s freedom to read. Julián Is a Mermaid is a reminder that the books they’re opposing aren’t propaganda or obscene. They’re carefully crafted works of art like Julián, challenged because they deliver the dangerous (?!) moral that every child deserves a happy, loving life. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“Julián Is a Mermaid arrived as an instant classic, and its staying power has proven that assessment. I have shared this book with so many people and families over the years since it came out, and I still feel its emotional power every single time.” —Lisa Swayze, executive director, Ithaca Literary/Buffalo Street Books, Ithaca, New York
If you liked this: When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff and Kaylani Juanita, Tough Like Mum by Lana Button and Carmen Mok
When you’re older: Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender, The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang
2018
Yuyi Morales
Dreamers
This lyrical picture-book memoir is a classic immigrant story, one whose details will be instantly familiar to some readers and eye-opening to others: the struggle to understand, the embarrassing mistakes, the slow-growing recognition of what it takes to get by in a new place. For Yuyi Morales and her son, this growth comes courtesy of the public library—specifically, the picture books in that library, which help both new Americans learn the language of their adopted home. So Dreamers is a picture book about other picture books, the covers of many of which decorate Morales’ vibrant painted collages, and it’s this celebration of the art form itself that is most touching in this sensitive story. Dreamers shows the ways picture books open doors to other worlds, the gifts they give new readers of all ages. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“On the crowded shelf of I-love-you books lives Morales’ specifically personal, heart-tugging, and wholly unique ode to her child and to the children’s books and libraries that warmly welcomed them. … With imagistic motifs and fantastical details to pore over on every vibrant page, this Pura Belpré Award winner (published in Spanish as Soñadores) is a wildly creative, gentle-hearted, reverent, and activist work.” —Elissa Gershowitz, editor in chief, the Horn Book Magazine
“Dreamers is love and hope in book form. In sharing her own story of finding home in a new country, Morales fills every page with humanity and heart, making this masterpiece a perfect antidote for despairing times.” —Minh Lê, author (Drawn Together)
If you liked this: The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read by Rita Lorraine Hubbard and Oge Mora, Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal
When you’re older: Front Desk by Kelly Yang, Parachute Kids by Betty Tang
2019
Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson
The Undefeated
Picture books have long served as children’s introductions not only to storytelling but to poetry, and this piece by Newbery winner Kwame Alexander is a master class in verse writing for young people. The Undefeated uses stirring imagery, irresistible rhythm, and haunting repetition to highlight the struggles and triumphs of Black Americans, from Wilma Rudolph to James Baldwin to Trayvon Martin—and a reference guide at the back offers pocket biographies of each figure, a treasury for any kid who loves to learn a little bit more. Alexander’s words lead readers by the hand into the astonishing oil paintings by Kadir Nelson, so energetic that Jack Johnson, for example, seems as if he could pop off the page, muscles agleam, and spar with you today. And when text and image work together—as in a central three-spread sequence linking slavery, the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, and police violence against Black people—the effect is spellbinding. The result is a treasure for Black parents in particular, and for any parent who wants to introduce a child to the tapestry of Black American history. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“The Undefeated unites Alexander’s poetic brilliance with Nelson’s masterful paintings to create an unparalleled picture book that confronts oft-ignored histories, while celebrating the strength, resilience, determination, and enduring hope of African Americans.” —Jared Crossley, academic, the Ohio State University
“The power couple—author Alexander and illustrator Nelson—deliver a love letter to Black America. Alexander’s sparse, lyrical, emotion-packed words are both celebratory and haunting. Nelson’s oil-on-panel paintings expand on Alexander’s poem with realistic-yet-larger-than-life figures, whose penetrating, viewer-facing gazes welcome readers and compel them to bear witness.” —Shelley Isaacson, academic, Simmons University
If you liked this: All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon and Marla Frazee, Martin’s Big Words by Doreen Rappaport and Bryan Collier
When you’re older: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, Betty Before X by Ilyasah Shabazz and Renée Watson, Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes
2019
Raúl the Third and Elaine Bay
¡Vamos! Let’s Go to the Market
Certain children want nothing more than to sit with a book forever, picking out every single little detail and delighting in it. For these kids, Raúl the Third is a 21st-century Richard Scarry, and his busy border town—full of bovine luchadors, anteaters frying churros, and bucket-hatted tortugas—is a treasure trove. Look over there—it’s a frog playing mariachi! Turn the page—a newsstand displays dozens of charming comic books! The text is in English, while objects and characters are labeled in Spanish, so as deliveryman Little Lobo and his dog Bernabé deliver supplies to all the shopkeepers of the mercado, young readers learn dozens of Spanish words. They also identify touchstones of Mexican culture and laugh at scores of funny details—from a flock of pigeons dining at a rooftop restaurant to a piggy piñata that just might resemble a certain president. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“Raúl the Third’s incredible art and imagination know no boundaries. Filled with eccentric characters, quirky shops, endless Easter eggs, and peppered with Spanish words, it’s no surprise this first book has spawned an entire ¡Vamos! universe.” —Margaret Raymo, executive editor, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
If you liked this: Mel Fell by Corey Tabor, Animal Albums From A to Z by Cece Bell
When you’re older: Mexikid by Pedro Martin, Hungry Hearts, edited by Elsie Chapman and Caroline Tung Richmond
2021
Phoebe Wahl
Little Witch Hazel: A Year in the Forest
Tundra Books
Four stories, one for each season, follow the life of Little Witch Hazel, who makes her home in a stump. The bright colors and handmade feel of Phoebe Wahl’s watercolor-and-pencil illustrations render Hazel’s hobbit-ish world in homey detail: her one-room cabin, complete with fireplace, teakettle, and herbs and onions drying on a line; her little overalls and hairy legs; her adorable neighbors, who are, of course, owls, rabbits, mice, and frogs. The second chapter comes to a gorgeous climax in spreads showing every forest denizen partying on a river, boating and swimming together in a perfect visual expression of the teeming feeling of high summer. Only at the end of the book do these four stories finally come together, as Hazel faces snowy peril in the depths of winter. Both longer and more homespun than the typical picture book, Little Witch Hazel will serve for children as a bridge to the world of graphic novels, and an inspiration for a life devoted to community and mutual aid. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“This book came out just a few years ago, but something about it—maybe the gorgeous, super-saturated illustrations, or the mysterious swerves in the story’s gentle fables—feels sturdy and ageless, like folklore. (Also, there’s never been a better depiction of being too busy to enjoy a perfect summer day, and how good it feels when you finally relent, stop doing things, and sit with your feet dangling in the water.)” —Julia Turner, host, Slate Culture Gabfest
“Little Witch Hazel feels at once cozily familiar and magically fresh. I wish I could fall into the pages and live in this perfectly created, wonderfully detailed world.” —Amanda Gaglione, assistant editor, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
If you liked this: On a Magical Do-Nothing Day by Beatrice Alemagna, Everything You Need for a Treehouse by Carter Higgins and Emily Hughes
When you’re older: Garlic and the Vampire by Bree Paulsen, The Sprite and the Gardener by Rii Abrego and Joe Whitt
2021
Carole Boston Weatherford and Floyd Cooper
Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre
Where once picture books were used by teachers purely as literacy tools, primarily for early elementary students just learning to read, in recent years they have become a crucial part of the late elementary and even middle school curricula—a way to introduce slightly older students to challenging concepts in an accessible, welcoming way. Unspeakable is an outstanding example of this new kind of picture book, a rigorously researched chronicle of Tulsa’s thriving Greenwood neighborhood, a bastion of Black middle-class life in Oklahoma, and the violence that swept across it in two terrible days in 1921. For a parent, seeing the deaths of hundreds given the picture-book treatment can be a shock. But keep in mind: This isn’t meant to be a bedtime story. For a curious student hungry to learn about a dark day in American history, Carole Boston Weatherford’s measured storytelling and Floyd Cooper’s stippled illustrations are a gift. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“Carole Boston Weatherford is the best biographer and nonfiction writer in children’s publishing … maybe ever. I always wanted to see the Black Wall Street/Tulsa massacre story told, and no one could have illustrated that dark stain in American history better than the legendary, the eternal, Floyd Cooper.” —Derrick Barnes, author (Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut)
“Weatherford includes documented fact after fact, and explores content and perspectives not normally addressed in stories for children. Cooper renders these historic facts with powerful sepia-based pastel and oil paintings that are rhythmic, atmospheric, and realistically illuminate the unspeakable horror of 1921, which was deliberately erased from United States history for over 75 years. Unspeakable is a masterpiece of much-needed truth, hope, and light.” —Cheryl Willis Hudson, author, editor, and publisher (When I Hear Spirituals)
If you liked this: Hold Them Close by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow and Patrick Dougher, Milo Imagines the World by Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson
When you’re older: Angel of Greenwood by Randi Pink, Black Birds in the Sky: The Story and Legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by Brandy Colbert, Lena and the Burning of Greenwood by Nikki Shannon Smith
2022
Sophie Blackall
Farmhouse
A remarkable book that encourages readers to emotionally invest in both history and the transformation of history into storytelling. A farmhouse in upstate New York hosts a family of 12 children, who grow up, then leave the house behind, to sink into the ground, taken over by the wilderness. Sophie Blackall’s gorgeously detailed, richly colored illustrations open windows into what happened inside this house. Red-cheeked farm kids sleep together in big bedrooms, clown around at the toddlers’ table, play pranks with their cat, tend a sick baby, and carry out the chore of milking the cows, at dawn and at dusk, “no matter the weather.” When the story transitions to the house’s abandonment phase, the book becomes profoundly nostalgic, and even child listeners—not always known for their sentimentality—may have their first epiphanies about the passage of time. The meta turn the book takes in the last few pages—the tumbled-down farmhouse, we find out, was on Blackall’s own property, and before bulldozing it, she rescued scraps from the ruin to make her illustrations—is stunning in its sophistication. Like the best contemporary picture-book creators, Blackall trusts young readers to come with her on a complicated, fascinating journey. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“Sophie is a master doing masterful things in this book. I could read it a thousand times and still find new things to discover.” —Jarrett Pumphrey, author (The Old Truck)
If you liked this: The Old Truck by Jerome Pumphrey and Jarrett Pumphrey, Hello Lighthouse by Sophie Blackall
When you’re older: The House on the Canal: The Story of the House That Hid Anne Frank by Thomas Harding and Britta Teckentrup, The Apartment: A Century of Russian History by Alexandra Litvina and Anna Desnitskaya, translated by Antonina W. Bouis
Rebecca Onion
The Melancholy Children’s Book With a Killer Final Twist
Read More
2023
X. Fang
Dim Sum Palace
The very first page of this dreamy, funny story overflows with personality, introducing readers to Liddy, who in X. Fang’s colored-pencil drawing stands atop her bed, hero-posed, “excited for bedtime, because the next day her family was going to the Dim Sum Palace.” Dim Sum Palace feels perfectly modern, while still casting an eye back to the classics. Like Mickey in Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen, Liddy will go on a dream journey, this one to the kitchen of a real dim sum palace, where she wanders among giant chefs, gets wrapped up into a dumpling, and is served to the Empress. This fantasia by a rising picture-book star is both a treasure of cultural specificity (witness the congee and chicken feet in the endpapers) and a story every kid will find themself inside. After all, what child hasn’t dreamed of eating so many treats her belly is round and full—or woken up with a playful scribble of messy hair? Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“A perfect picture book. When I got to the last page, I could hear the trumpets in my brain heralding the arrival of a major new talent who’d be making great work for decades to come. And then I saw the back flap, where she drew herself as a giant dumpling, and my esteem for her doubled.” —Mac Barnett, author (Extra Yarn)
“I am awed by Fang’s storytelling talent. An homage to In the Night Kitchen, this delightful story about a child’s nighttime visit to a busy kitchen captures the spirit of Sendak’s book and matches it with a sense of imagination, humor, and adventure all its own.” —Kelly Proudfit, youth services librarian, Greensboro, North Carolina
If you liked this: Where’s Halmoni? by Julie Kim, Sophie’s Squash by Pat Zietlow Miller and Anne Wilsdorf
When you’re older: Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie of Doom by Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr, Maizy Chen’s Last Chance by Lisa Yee, Chinese Menu by Grace Lin
2023
Jon Klassen
The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale
Otilla runs away from home and finds a mansion in the woods inhabited only by a talking skull. So far, so mildly scary, but as soon as Otilla feeds the skull a bite of pear and it falls through him and onto the floor, the reader’s sense of peril recedes. The Skull, 112 pages long, has more words than many picture books—indeed, it has chapters—and Jon Klassen’s willingness to follow his story as far as it takes him marks this book as a true original. Its horror-movie setting gets cozy-fied by the roly-poly look of the skull, and by the truly genuine friendship that emerges between the girl and this empty mansion’s only resident. When Otilla performs a ghastly middle-of-the-night service to liberate her skull pal from a pesky skeleton that wants to own him, a certain type of baby goth will be thrilled. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
“The Skull defies nearly every ‘rule’ of 21st-century children’s books: Don’t be too scary. Don’t allude to death, unless it’s a book about coping with grief. Don’t retell or reinvent stories not directly related to your own culture. Don’t leave any plot points, especially unsettling ones, unresolved. Don’t show children in precarious situations on their own without an adult nearby. Don’t use a format that doesn’t fit squarely on either a picture-book or a chapter-book shelf in a store. I don’t just admire the book for breaking the rules; I admire that it does so brilliantly, creating something entirely new.” —Andrea Spooner, vice president and editorial director, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
If you liked this: Duck, Death and the Tulip by Wolf Erlbruch, A Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Lin
When you’re older: The Nixie of the Mill-Pond and Other European Stories (Cautionary Fables and Fairytales, Vol. 3), The Singing Bones by Shaun Tan
2025
Neil Sharpson and Dan Santat
Don’t Trust Fish
The picture-book world has gotten more comfortable with absurdity in the past 25 years, and Don’t Trust Fish might represent the pinnacle of laugh-out-loud folly. It first adopts the guise of a kids book about nature, with scientific-looking illustrations of snakes and birds and staid descriptions of their characteristics. Then, Neil Sharpson’s words and Dan Santat’s illustrations explode out of the box and become a manic, brightly colored manifesto against, well, fish. Fish, the book proclaims, cannot be trusted! (“We don’t know that fish have giant battle aquariums with laser beams and big long legs that they will one day use to take over the world,” the narrator says. “We don’t know that they DON’T have them either.”) Sophisticated readers—ones nearly at the level of the middle-grade graphic novels this clever book resembles—will giggle at the mounting allegations leveled against the innocent fish and will howl at the last-page twist, which reveals that the ichthyophobic “author” has his own particular ulterior motives. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop.org.
If you liked this: We Are Definitely Human by X. Fang, Mother Bruce by Ryan Higgins
When you’re older: The Aquanaut by Dan Santat, Plain Jane and the Mermaid by Vera Brosgol
Update, Sept. 22, 2025: This list has been updated to clarify that Last Stop on Market Street was a Caldecott Honor book but did not win the Caldecott Medal.