This year’s Gift Guide continues with twelve favorite picture books of the late summer and fall. I think this might be the best collection of picture books I’ve ever put on a Gift Guide: every single one is a book I would have happily bought for my own kids and never tired of reading (on repeat!). Many a night I lay in bed turning picture book titles over in my head to land on just the right combination. And I love where I landed. I really, really love these quirky, imaginative, beautiful, memorable books that enfold the listener in the magic and merriment of storytelling. (Spoiler alert: even when they smell like vomit.)
I wish you luck making the hard choices, because there are so many good options. As always, links will take you to Old Town Books, where I take great pride in curating the kids and teens collection, and I hope you will consider supporting us.
And PSST, if you’ve got a kiddo who is starting to come out of picture books, don’t miss the last one on this list: it’s long-form, wonderfully inventive, and proves once again that the Brits are in a class of their own when it comes to children’s stories.
Towed by Toad
by Jashar Awan
Ages 2-6
I’m very happy for word to get out that Jashar Awan is my new kid lit crush: while I’ve liked his picture books to date, this one escalates him to a whole new level (you should also take my word for it and pre-order his next, Every Monday Mabel, out in February). What makes his books so good? An economy of language! At a time when I worry editors are dozing off, Jashar Awan is getting back to what picture books are supposed to do: allow text and pictures to work in tandem, with enough space in the middle for the reader to do some of the decoding work as well.
Towed By Toad, which you will be all too happy to read on demand, delivers a complete, suspenseful, and highly satisfying narrative arc with only a few punchy words or sentences on each page. It’s not going to feel short—there are 48 pages, after all—but the page turns are fast and furious, much like the vehicles themselves, which race down the street towards their destinations…until they don’t. Because, inevitably, a car or three breaks down (or gets a flat or forgets to stop), and that’s where Toad comes in. “Toad answers the call. Toad tows them all.” But what happens when Toad’s tow truck unexpectedly goes plop? What happens when Toad himself needs help?
A story that puts pedal to the metal to remind us that it’s better than OK—it’s encouraged!—to ask for help. (Also, the names only add to the read-aloud fun. Skunky van der Stink, William Goat-Gruff, and Hettie Hoot? COME ON! I’ll also mention that the book has mad potential for the early reader crowd, too.)
The Man Who Didn’t Like Animals
by Deborah Underwood; illus. LeUyen Pham
Ages 3-6
Let the record show that I chose this book for the Gift Guide months and months before the New York Times decided to award it Best Illustrated Book of the Year. It was actually one of the first books I flagged for the Guide, because I love a riff on a classic and The Man Who Didn’t Like Animals has given us the Old MacDonald origin story we didn’t know we needed—and a grand ol’ time at that.
Long before Old MacDonald had a farm, he had a tidy apartment in the city. He relished his aloneness and loathed pets of any kind. But then a cat finds its way into his apartment—“‘I don’t like cats,’ said the man. ‘Go away.’ But the cat didn’t.”—and into the man’s daily routines. And the man thinks, OK, this isn’t so bad, but then another cat arrives on the doorstop. And then a dog. And another dog. And some ducks. And, well, you get the gist, each animal surprising the man with the way it snuggles into his heart, until the reality of Old MacDonald and his farm no longer seems so improbable.
Listeners will spark to Deborah Underwood’s predictive sentence pattern, as well as the crescendo effect of the domestic chaos. But it’s LeUyen Pham’s illustrations that steal the show, playing with white space and perspective to heighten the story’s emotional pulse, this turn of events that one curmudgeon never saw coming.
Worm’s Lost & Found
by Jule Wellerdiek
Ages 4-8
Jule Wellerdiek’s Worm’s Lost & Found, first published in Switzerland, is my under-the-radar pick of the year. (I’ll be shocked if you see this on another Gift Guide.) Tell me that cover doesn’t make you smile! I’m always game for unusual, eccentric anthropomorphized animal characters, but throw in rich social-emotional content and perfectly-timed visual humor and I’m a goner.
Worm runs a bang-up lost and found business for his animal friends. We’re talking seriously satisfied customers. When an animal loses something, Worm can almost always locate it in one of the myriad drawers, cabinets, or shelves he spends his days sorting. And then, one morning, as Worm is preparing to head to the office, he can’t find his hat. No problem, he thinks, he’ll call his best pal Seal, one of his best customers, who has ample experience with losing things. As Seal walks Worm through her practical, methodical (take good notes, kids) three-step process for finding things, Worm runs the entire spectrum of emotions: optimistic, impatient, irritable, downright angry, and depressed. That is, until they get to sneaky Step Three, when Seal officially saves the day.
A delightful look, not only at what we can do when we lose things, but the satisfaction that comes from helping others. (I’m also going to offer up that above spread as the Most Relatable Illustration of the Year.)
The Bakery Dragon
by Devin Elle Kurtz
Ages 4-8
The Bakery Dragon is the hands-down favorite among my colleagues at the bookstore: they’ve fallen and fallen fast for the adorably tiny dragon named Ember. It’s not hard to see why! Devin Elle Kurtz may be new to the world of picture books, but he’s a seasoned animator, and his lush, light-filled world is one I’d happily sign up to live in. Plus, the bread is freshly baked, and I’m going to take all the carbs I can get in the year ahead.
Ember’s presence may pale in comparison to the larger, more powerful dragons—his roar is closer to a polite sneeze—but he shares the same obsession with shiny treasure. His search for some treasure of his own to guard leads him to the glowing nighttime window of a bakery, its warm loaves stacked up like buttery bricks of gold. But when the owner brings him in out of the storm, Ember discovers that hoarding may not be all it’s cracked up to be, especially if given the chance to apprentice to the best baker around.
A story of sharing has never tasted so scrumptious.
Nose to Nose
by Thyra Heder
Ages 4-8
Fun fact: I’ve never featured a book about pee on a Gift Guide before, but these are hardly normal times! And hey, what could be more fun than to speculate about what our canine friends are encoding in their potty breaks around the neighborhood? Add to that Thyra Heder’s dramatic pacing and animated facial expressions—her background in storyboarding for ad campaigns has served her well—and Nose to Nose is a charmer through and through.
When Toby moves in to the neighborhood with his owners, he hopes to attract some fellow doggie pals with his frequent leg raises. Sure enough, when he checks the marked spots later, they’re full of new messages—“Must chase squirrels,” My tummy hurts,” and “Beware the babies” are just a few—only none are directed towards him. While he waits for the new friendships he hope will come, he takes solace in a ball he finds at the park and brings home—“smells like puddles and raccoons”—but when he checks the chat boards later that week, it becomes apparent he has stolen the precious belonging of another dog. Now, it seems, all the dogs in the ‘hood are trying to suss out the culprit. Can Toby set the record straight about his innocent mistake before the rain washes all the evidence away?
A story that begins with pee but ends with new friendships and the power of an apology.
We Are Definitely Human
by X. Fang
Ages 4-8
If you talked to me last January, when the Caldecott Award was announced, I probably talked your ear off about how X. Fang got robbed—robbed!—of her due in Dim Sum Palace, her debut picture book from last year’s Gift Guide and one of the most visually inventive books I’ve ever encountered. Well, she’s back with We Are Definitely Human, another offbeat delight and one with arguably even more kid appeal. I have watched kids lose their minds in the ecstasy of this reading experience. If there’s one thing that kids love, it’s watching adults get played, even if what begins as a story about gullibility ends with a case for radical compassion.
Three unusual looking creatures show up on Mr. and Mrs. Li’s doorstep in the middle of the night: “Their eyes were very big, their skin was very blue, and their shape was very hard to describe.” Emphatically, they pronounce themselves humans, hailing from Europe (?), and having trouble with a broken-down…car. Readers, of course, are immediately in on the joke—the hot pink spaceship is visible from page one—but the fun comes from seeing what Mr. and Mrs. Li will do. And they are skeptical. X. Fang’s page turns are brilliantly timed throughout the story, but at this moment they quite literally draw our attention to the idea that kindness is always a simple choice—a single beat—away. “Mr. Li was a kind human and he did what kind humans do. He offered to help.”
The frolicking that follows, as Mr. and Mrs. Li play host to this odd trio, is pure, unfettered delight—in part because the droll illustrations are allowed to do most of the heavy lifting.
Still Life
by Alex London; illus. Paul O. Zelinsky
Ages 4-8
If X. Fang gets passed up for the next Caldecott, perhaps it shall fall to another deserving talent, though one with no shortage of accolades already to his name. Still, Alex London’s picture book, Still Life, in which a painter loses control over his own painting, gives Paul O. Zelinsky ample leeway to exercise his brilliant visual humor. Give this one to your young artist—or to anyone who would enjoy pulling one over on the narrator.
A painter, standing before his almost completed canvas painting, breaks the fourth wall to address us readers—or, more precisely, to lecture us about the predictability of still life painting. “This is a still life. It is a painting of objects sitting still. In a still life, nothing moves.” And yet, as the painter speaks, we begin to notice that things are moving in his painting, subtly at first and then increasingly, absurdly over-the-top. In fact, each time the painter assures us that what we’re seeing would never happen—there would never, for example, be mice hiding in the painting and then springing out to wreak havoc with their “jammy footprints”—the discrepancy only grows.
Still Life capitalizes on a favorite trope of young readers—when the words and pictures tell two different stories—and primes them to be curious questioners of art and life.
The Museum of Very Bad Smells
by Monica Arnaldo
Ages 4-8
A scratch ‘n sniff whodunit that puts kids up close and personal with stinky cheese, wet dog, and vomit? What a time to be alive! Sorry not sorry, but this is on this year’s Guide, because I aim to help you be the Cool Parent. Or the Cool Aunt. Or the Cool Uncle. After all, this is the stuff that kids dreams are made of.
You know Monica Arnaldo from last year’s runaway back-to-school hit, Mr. S. Now, with The Museum of Very Bad Smells, she has penned an interactive mystery about a robbery at said museum, after a World Famous Rotten Egg goes missing. But the resident detective needs our help to sniff out the clues…literally. And, fair warning, they STINK.
Extra props for the deceptively sweet illustrations, which perfectly contrast the foul reveals. Make no mistake: you will smell this book across the room. Cue the shrieks. Like I said, stuff. of. dreams.
The Dictionary Story
by Oliver Jeffers & Sam Winston
Ages 5-8
A story about words that bust their way out of the dictionary because they’re unhappy with its restrictive format? This year has given us so many subversive picture books, perhaps none as fun as The Dictionary Story, a collaboration between Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston that makes lexophiles out of us with every turn of the page.
“The Dictionary had all of the words that had ever been read, which meant she could say all the things that could ever be said. Yet, when you read her pages from First to Last, she didn’t tell a story like all the other books.” This is a Dictionary with an identity crisis: she’s distressingly aware that she doesn’t look and sound like other books. And it’s one kids will relate to, because I know mine aren’t the only ones who went through a phase of begging me to “read” the dictionary to them. The ambitious enticement of ingesting every word in the English language is quickly eclipsed by the exhaustive tedium of such an undertaking. The Dictionary is, quite simply, not meant to be read.
And yet, Jeffers and Winston have created a Dictionary that subverts the confines of its packaging to tell the kind of story other books do. In her jealousy, our Dictionary decides to “bring her words to life.” Suddenly, on her yellowed spread of black-and-white entries for the letter A, a bright green Alligator pushes its way out. The result is chaos, as word entries are uprooted and jumbled, their tiny type literally slamming into itself. And the chaos compounds, as the Alligator goes in search of a tasty Doughnut who, wanting to avoid being eaten, springs itself out of the page and takes off, unearthing a Ghost. And a Cloud. And dictionaries aren’t great in the rain….
The entertainment only escalates as Dictionary tries to regain control of the characters she has unleashed, but the real magic comes from repeat readings, where kids will spy the clever ways in which these characters interact with the text of the dictionary itself, which continues to run along the bottom of the page. A picture book that entertains as much as it gets us to think about the possibilities—and maybe even pitfalls—of storytelling.
A Face is a Poem
by Julie Morstad
Ages 3-7
I can never resist Julie Morstad, whose books delight in giving us unusual lenses through which to see the world, while doubling as stunning works of art. Time is a Flower was a Gift Guide pick back in 2021 and now, in A Face is a Poem, she trades time for faces, celebrating the uniqueness and diversity of the human face.
Faces are all around us—people faces, flower faces, cloud faces, even potato faces—but how often do we stop and really consider what makes a face a face—or, rather, how many different components converge in one human face? “The soft and smooth/ or crinkly skin,/ the just-so nose,/ the delicate or scratchy hairs/ and all those one-of-a-kind marks.” Take eyes, for example. Are they really just blue or brown or might we call some “amber sunflower” or “midnight moon”? If you could pick your own sprinkles for freckles, which would you choose? And what about the way our faces change to show what’s inside us at that moment? If we rearranged our facial features, would people still recognize us?
A clever, artistic exploration of something we often take for granted but which is endlessly fascinating once you start honing your powers of observation. “One thing that won’t change, though: a face is to love.”
The Midnight Panther
by Poonam Mistry
Ages 3-7
Every Gift Guide could benefit from an original fable—something that feels at once intimately familiar and cleverly new—and you won’t find a better storyteller for this one than Poonam Mistry. If you’re going to tell a story about a panther on a quest to discover what makes him as impressive as the other cats in the forest, you’d better make your art as impressive as its subject. And that’s exactly what Poonam Mistry does in The Midnight Panther, creating a majestic backdrop from her signature style reminiscent of Indian textiles and hand-painted ornaments.
Tiger’s stripes are bold, Lion’s mane blazes, and Leopard’s spots dazzle. Panther, unsure where he fits, attempts to mimic them: he uses pollen to paint stripes on his back; he pins feathers around his face like a mane; and he employs leaves as spots. Each time, one of the elements—Rain, Wind, Sun—interferes to return him to his original form; and, each time, the panther bemoans that he’ll never feel as special as the others. Until a full moon lights up the night sky and Panther discovers what panthers do best.
Young (and old) eyes will marvel at the intricate shapes and patterns woven into every one of these stunning illustrations, as Panther learns to set aside his fear and doubt and claim his own authentic self.
The Zebra’s Great Escape
by Katherine Rundell; illus. Sara Ogilvie
Ages 5-9
Katherine Rundell is the acclaimed fantasy darling of the UK—look for her new upper middle-grade trilogy starter, Impossible Creatures, in the tween portion of this year’s Gift Guide—and here she turns her imaginative language, kinship with animals, and artful storytelling to the picture book audience. Divided into three parts and infectiously illustrated by fellow Brit, Sara Ogilvie, The Zebra’s Great Escape is perfect for kids ready for longer, meatier stories—rebellious girls and murderous villains not optional.
Mink is as feisty and loyal a free spirit as they come, so when a runaway, slightly magical zebra approaches her with a dangerous plight, communicating by putting pictures behind her eyeballs, she knows she’s up to the task. She starts by doing what any hero would do: she hides the zebra under her parents’ noses, while she learns more about his treacherous escape from the black-cloaked Mr. Spit. Together, relying on Mink’s newfound ability to communicate with animals—“I’ve always been able to talk. It’s humans who don’t bother to listen,” the jaded old dog next door tells her—they make a bold plan to rescue the zebra’s parents and a host of other wrongfully imprisoned creatures. The trouble is, their plan relies on a wild game of telephone…
Whether you choose to read the story as an allegory for the current refugee crisis or whether you simply marvel at its inventiveness at every turn—ideally, you’ll do both—it packs a punch not quickly forgotten. (Oh, and don’t miss the before-and-after surprise hiding under the case cover!)
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