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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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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For young magazine readers with literary pretensions, it wasn’t just our best option; it was our only option.
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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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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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A Long-Forgotten TV Script by Rachel Carson Is Now a Picture Book
In “Something About the Sky,” the National Book Award-winning marine biologist brings her signature sense of wonder to the science of clouds.
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Picture Books About the Way We Look
A story of gross beauty from David Sedaris and Ian Falconer, a scabrous tale from Beatrice Alemagna, and more.
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José Saramago’s Childhood Memoir Inspires Companion Picture Books
The Nobel laureate’s “Small Memories” is a mix of peasant life, boyhood adventure and wide-eyed wonder.
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How John Lewis and Coretta Scott King embodied the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy while each creating their own.
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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
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
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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
An enchanting work by Italy’s foremost living children’s author is finally available in English.
By Joseph Luzzi
L.M. Montgomery’s oft-forgotten novel, which turns 100 this year, is more timely than ever.
By Elisabeth Egan
Two new middle grade novels insist Hans Christian Andersen got it all wrong.
By Jennifer Howard
Jeanne DuPrau’s “Project F,” Patricia Forde’s “The Girl Who Fell to Earth” and Donna Barba Higuera’s “Alebrijes” answer the question, Could this be the beginning of the end?
By Rick Yancey
Jewish magic, Southern conjure magic and Scottish magic abound in new middle grade novels by Laurel Snyder, Eden Royce and Elle McNicoll.
By Marjorie Ingall
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“Remember Us” recalls the fires of 1970s Bushwick. “Gone Wolf” begins in a 2111 Southern breakaway nation after a second Civil War.
By David Barclay Moore
New works of nonfiction and fiction transcend stereotypes, and connect a wealth of ideas and facts for young readers.
By Abby McGanney Nolan
As a new novella and a new edition of “The Tale of Despereaux” remind us, her stories demand a lot from young readers, but the rewards can be magical.
By Adam Gidwitz
In spooky stories by Ben Hatke, Remy Lai and the team of Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass, the secrets of the undead lead perilously close to home.
By Soman Chainani
A Mexican American family heads to Jalisco in their Winnebago and a “bruja” from Puerto Rico steps out of a cab in Brooklyn.
By Matt de la Peña
The books in Peter Brown’s “Wild Robot” trilogy were the first to wallop my son with the mix of tragedy and joy that define great art and also real life.
By Craig Fehrman
Books or beach? In a coastal town, the decision is easy, thanks to artwork by the author of “Blueberries for Sal” and “Make Way for Ducklings.”
By Elisabeth Egan
Rather than treading on sacred ground, Luca Debus and Francesco Matteuzzi’s “Peanuts”-style biography brings Charles M. Schulz and the strip together as one.
By Jeff Smith
Ilene Cooper’s “This Boy” shows how the grayness of John’s and Paul’s childhoods fed into the explosion that was just around the corner.
By Nick Hornby
Harakka Island, a creative community off the coast of Helsinki, Finland, helped the illustrator Marika Maijala come into her own as an artist. “I don’t know where my art ends and my life begins. The border is fleeting.”
By Johanna Lemola and Saara Mansikkamaki
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These mysteries run the gamut, from quirky Gothic to small-town cozy to chilly Nordic noir.
By Robin Stevens
In W.B. Laughead’s 1916 logging industry pamphlet, a minor Midwestern folk hero underwent a major growth spurt.
By Patricia Nelson Limerick
“Writing for kids had long been an ambition of mine, but until recently I didn’t know it had long been an ambition.”
By Bruce Handy
The title character in Jon Klassen’s new chapter book, “The Skull,” is the personification of his unique brand of expressionless humor.
By Ransom Riggs
MacNolia Cox speaks only one sentence in a picture book about her trip to the 1936 national spelling bee. Zaila Avant-garde, the 2021 champ, writes volumes.
By Cynthia Greenlee
With so few words, most of them kid-friendly, it should be a piece of cake. But it depends on who’s holding the whisk.
By Daniel Hahn
Stories, both new and evergreen, to help children of divorce heal.
By Jennifer Hubert Swan
Decades after “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” an anthology and a novel let readers see periods through the eyes of diverse protagonists.
By Anna Holmes
Seven brand-new and time-tested books about sleepaway camp.
By Elisabeth Egan
Marine biology and astronomy play crucial roles in two middle grade novels about trauma and mental health.
By Erin Entrada Kelly
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In new novels by the National Book Award finalists Gary D. Schmidt and Brandon Hobson, adolescent boys navigating parental loss find strength in ancient mythology.
By John Schwartz
Otis and Peanut, Panda and Squirrel, and Bear and Bird bravely follow in the footsteps of Frog and Toad and George and Martha.
By Sergio Ruzzier
In 1959, the picture-book nuptials of a black rabbit and a white rabbit caused intense debate across the nation.
By Cynthia Greenlee
In “The Eyes & the Impossible,” an exuberant dog runs free. In “Big Tree,” two sycamore seeds embark on an epic journey.
By Nicola Davies
In Gavriel Savit’s new fantasy, set at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, an orphan girl who performs sham séances finds she may have true powers after all.
By Laurel Snyder
Bea Wolf is a sugar-hyped, nap-deprived, battle-ready child; Mulysses is a mule.
By Sarah Boxer
In “The Manifestor Prophecy,” 12-year-old Nic Blake draws supernatural strength from her “Remarkable” African American forebears.
By Veronica Chambers
In M.T. Anderson’s “Elf Dog & Owl Head,” a scrappy hound scampers out of a magical world and into our own.
By Lev Grossman
In Sarah Maslin Nir’s “The Flying Horse,” a young equestrian and her trusty steed jump back in time.
By Jane Smiley
“You Are Here: Connecting Flights,” a story collection edited by Ellen Oh, contends not only with racist aggressions, but also with cultural expectations and adolescent insecurities.
By Dave Kim
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In Daniel Nayeri’s new middle grade novel, a runaway orphan boy joins a caravan and falls under the sway of its loquacious leader.
By Aditi Sriram
Dan Santat and the late Jerry Pinkney draw from life (literally) in their memoirs for young readers.
By David Small
“The Windeby Puzzle” begins in 1952, when a small, remarkably well-preserved body is unearthed from a bog in northern Germany.
By Laura Amy Schlitz
In “The Lost Year” and “Winterkill,” young people fight to expose secrets and lies during the Great Famine.
By Elena Gorokhova
Our 16th president, an early adopter of his era’s newest technology, has a lot in common with today’s Instagram and TikTok stars.
By Candace Fleming
These old people don’t exist only for their grandchildren, if they have any, and they don’t dispense wisdom or soup.
By Marjorie Ingall
Here are the most notable picture and middle grade books, selected by The Times’s children’s books editor.
By Jennifer Krauss
From remixed nursery rhymes to whimsical, philosophical comics.
By Catherine Hong
Julie Buxbaum, Candace Fleming and Jasmine Warga offer kids opportunities to learn while being entertained.
By Lucy Hawking
In their graphic memoirs, Abigail Balfe and Liz Montague capture what it’s like to grow up neurodivergent, and how creative outlets helped them find their way.
By Lyn Miller-Lachmann
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Two books for young readers shine a light on the experiences of Japanese Americans during World War II.
By Abby McGanney Nolan
In “Unstoppable Us,” he presents the provocative ideas that drove his 2015 best seller, “Sapiens,” without dumbing them down.
By John Schwartz
Suddenly, remakes and adaptations of L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” series are proliferating.
By Catherine Hong
First published in Japan in 1983, this picture book from the fabled animator is eerie, enchanting and surpassingly strange.
By Susan Napier
Two new picture books and a novel for young readers place children at the center of environmental calamity.
By Catrin Einhorn
In new novels by Carlie Sorosiak, Lynne Rae Perkins and Katherine Applegate, animals are emblems of how we humans treat one another.
By Gregory Maguire
It’s who Jackie Robinson and Tommie Smith were off the field that elevates two new books about them.
By Matt de la Peña
Our guest critic, a dead ringer for the elf who went to Halloween, weighs in on a trio of ghoulish treats.
By Christian McKay Heidicker
A West African girl thrust from her family’s private Eden confronts awful truths on the high seas in Timothée de Fombelle’s “The Wind Rises.”
By M.T. Anderson
In his new novel-in-verse, “The Door of No Return,” the Newbery Medal-winning author works hard to show that white people weren’t the only ones perpetuating an unjust system.
By Kwame Dawes
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Dan Gemeinhart’s latest book, “The Midnight Children,” is light compared with “The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise,” but weighty nonetheless.
By Craig Morgan Teicher
“Moonflower,” inspired by the author Kacen Callender’s own struggles, is about helping young people to heal.
By Tae Keller
Karina Yan Glaser, author of the Vanderbeekers series, recommends picture books, chapter books and novels for preschool to middle grade readers.
By Karina Yan Glaser
In “Hummingbird” and “Holler of the Fireflies,” a girl with brittle bones and a boy plagued by racist tensions seek healing in the hills.
By Anna Holmes
Two new middle grade novels with academic settings have a message for students: Beware adults who claim they only want what’s best for you.
By Jennifer Howard
In “The Secret Battle of Evan Pao,” a Chinese American boy and his family feel as if they’re refighting the U.S. Civil War.
By Shing Yin Khor
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