Welcome To Story Hour: 100 Favorite Books For Young Readers

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Esmé Shapiro for NPR

Esmé Shapiro for NPR

It ‘s been such a foreign, lost summer. Camps and schools and activities have shut down during the pandemic, leaving kids and caregivers stuck at home and climbing the walls — and sometimes the garden fences. With that in thinker, we decided that this year ‘s summer reader poll should be all about keeping kids occupied. We asked you to tell us about your favorite kids ‘ books, from board books for babies to great read-alouds to early chapter books and even a few books for older readers. And thousands of you answered. As with all our summer polls, this one is n’t a straight-up popularity contest. ( Otherwise it would have been nothing but 100 Mo Willems books — and we love Mo Willems, but that would n’t have been the most utilitarian tilt. ) preferably, it ‘s a curated list built from your recommendations and picks from our technical panel of judges — a fantastic group of authors, librarians, publishers and all-around book nerds. And rather of a rank list, it ‘s grouped into categories that we hope will help you find just the right books for the kids in your life sentence .

now, we understand that half the playfulness of a list is arguing about what did n’t make it on — and our judges had to make some hard choices. But there was one easy decision : A few years ago, we did a summer list based on All Things Considered ‘s Backseat Book Club of great reads for kids from 9 to 14. This year ‘s list is focused on younger readers, but we did include a few books for older kids. so if something appeared on the Backseat 100, we did n’t include it here. That means no Charlotte ‘s Web, no Matilda and no Little House books ( though we ‘ve got some fantastic suggestions for Little House fans, like Linda Sue Park ‘s Prairie Lotus ). We want this list to be a tool for discovery, which means we had to walk a delicate path when it comes to books that are undeniable classics — we knew all hell would rain down on us if we left out Where the Wild Things Are or The very athirst Caterpillar. But we decided you credibly did n’t need our avail to discover Dr. Seuss, Richard Scarry or The little Engine that Could, indeed those did n’t make it onto the list. And as always, we had to decide which make to pick from creators who were nominated multiple times. Readers may remember the Nora Roberts Rule, which came about during 2015 ‘s romance poll : No one gets on the number doubly UNLESS they ‘re as titanic a trope in their field as Roberts is in love story ; we included her in that number under both her own name and her pen name, J.D. Robb. This year brought an concern construction. Since many books on the list have both authors and illustrators, we finally decided that authors could appear only once, but we did n’t mind seeing illustrators again. ( Hello, Christian Robinson and Vashti Harrison ! ) And broadly, when person appeared more than once in the nominations, we went with whichever title was more democratic with voters ( indeed Kevin Henkes ‘ Lilly ‘s Purple Plastic Purse beat out Kitten ‘s First Full Moon ). You ‘ll besides see there ‘s a department of books for older readers. We wanted to recognize that a lot of kids read ahead of their age groups — and besides, there have been thus many bang-up books that came out since we put in concert the Backseat 100 list in 2013 that it seemed a pity not to include a few of them here.

We hope you and the kids in your animation will have deoxyadenosine monophosphate much fun poring through this number as we had putting it together ! We had a smash recalling erstwhile favorites and discovering new classics ( and a shoutout to our gracious judges, who let me sneak in one of my all-time childhood faves, Paul Goble ‘s gorgeous The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses ). To make things easier, we ‘ve split up the list into categories : picture Perfect, Baby ‘s Bookshelf, Conversation Starters, Family Life, Animal ( and Monster ) Friends, Folktales and Fairy Tales, Fun to Read Out Loud, Nonfiction, Early Chapter Books, and Older Readers. felicitous learn !