Loren Long has illustrated books by Barack Obama, Madonna and Amanda Gorman. His No. 1 best seller, “The Yellow Bus,” took him in a different direction — one that required time, patience and toothpicks.
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“Tree. Table. Book” and “Not Nothing” feature young people whose friendships with the very old unlock fading memories.
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Bruce Handy, Lisk Feng and Cat Min present shadows for what they are: the non-nefarious interplay of light and dark.
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Sometimes we forget that moving is not just about goodbyes. It’s also about hellos.
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Picture Books Where the Playground Is a Metaphor for Life Itself
It can be thrillingly dangerous and profoundly comforting at the same time.
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Hoot, Howl and Sneeze: 6 Picture Books for Maximum Read-Aloud Joy
From silly rhymes to lively sound effects to stealthily-building suspense, these old standbys and new classics have something for everyone.
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A Picture Book Paean to the Golden Age of LPs
Kids don’t need to know what zydeco is, or that Mandy and the Meerkats are a nod to Diana Ross and the Supremes, to dig this spoof of vintage vinyl.
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A Luminary Children’s Author You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Picture book writers whose works look different from one another because they’re illustrated by different artists are less apt to be on your radar.
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The Colors and Shapes of Refugee Childhoods
In Edel Rodriguez’s “The Mango Tree” and Viet Thanh Nguyen and Minnie Phan’s “Simone,” environmental displacement is a reality and a metaphor.
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For young magazine readers with literary pretensions, it wasn’t just our best option; it was our only option.
By Sadie Stein
In “Ultraviolet,” by Aida Salazar, and “Mid-Air,” by Alicia D. Williams, the thunderstorm of adolescence splits open a once peaceful sky.
By Juan Vidal
A comics collection’s sibling narrators and a graphic novel’s hapless heroine change their stories as they go along.
By Sabrina Orah Mark
Alki Zei’s Greek classic, set in the birthplace of democracy in the mid-1930s, feels eerily relevant in today’s America.
By Adam Gopnik
Even for the youngest readers, attempted piggy-bank robbery may not cut it.
By Adam Rubin
Erika Lee and Christina Soontornvat’s “Made in Asian America” spotlights young people who defy erasure and make their own history.
By Paula Yoo
Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker unearth botany’s buried history.
By Celia McGee
Lesa Cline-Ransome’s new novel in verse adds female voices to the late-19th-century Black homesteaders movement.
By Salamishah Tillet
The children in three illustrated satirical tales are up against something far more complex than ogres, witches and big bad wolves.
By Jon Agee
How the bunny became the reigning star of children’s literature.
By Sadie Stein
A boy’s mother is missing. Her Olivetti was the last one to see her before she disappeared.
By Tom Hanks
Gertrude Chandler Warner’s “The Boxcar Children,” celebrating its 100th year, depicts the delights of concocting scrumptious meals.
By Anna Holmes
Britain’s youngest code-breakers, brought to life in a new nonfiction book by Candace Fleming, were normal teenagers: playing pranks, attending dances.
By Sarah Lyall
“Louder Than Hunger” joins a very small shelf of novels and memoirs that address eating disorders from a male point of view.
By John Schwartz
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In “Ferris,” a girl and her grandmother are visited by a friendly ghost; in Erin Entrada Kelly’s “The First State of Being,” a boy is visited by a time traveler.
By Gayle Forman
In Katherine Marsh’s new novel, the girl with the snaky curls loses neither her head nor her wits.
By Nalini Jones
Veera Hiranandani’s “Amil and the After” and Saadia Faruqi’s “The Partition Project” show that the rending of the subcontinent is as relevant and heartbreaking as ever.
By Pooja Makhijani
Here are the year’s most notable picture, chapter and middle grade books, selected by our children’s books editor.
By Jennifer Krauss
From a 200th-anniversary edition of Clement C. Moore’s Christmas Eve tale to lightheartedly loopy poems for every day of the year.
By Catherine Hong
What children who face eyesight, hearing and literacy challenges can decipher may be limited, but what they appreciate and celebrate knows no bounds.
By Aditi Sriram
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