Calling%20caldecott
I’ve heard a lot of folks say that 2025 was an outstanding year for picture books, and it was, but I think that every year. Announcement day is coming soon, though, and there are some books we didn’t get to cover that we wanted to briefly acknowledge before the big day arrives. I’ll start with...
As with an intricately knotted Persian rug, each square inch of this book is maximized to include as much detailed beauty as possible. The case cover resembles the old frayed rug we soon learn will be replaced when the protagonists weave a new one, while the illustrations on the CIP...
Night Light, written and illustrated by Michael Emberley, functions as an early reader, from its trim size, paperboard covers, and "I Like to Read tag" that also labels it a "COMIC" in red. And yet, this gem of a book exhibits a discerning integration of art and text in the most Caldecott-worthy...
In Joyce Sidman's Dear Acorn (Love, Oak): Letter Poems to Friends, Melissa Sweet's illustrations carry much of the book’s expressive and structural weight, shaping how relationship, scale, and connection are understood across the poems. Sidman organizes the text as eight paired letter-poem exchanges between "big” and "little” voices, such as oak and acorn, sky and bubble, and button...
When I was in the fifth grade, our teacher, Mrs. Maleski, had the class keep journals, which she periodically collected and graded. I still have my journal, a classic black-and-white marbled Mead composition book. My personality is fully-formed in its pages—my preoccupation with my pets and what I was having for lunch, my intolerance of wet socks, my focus on...
The refrain “something was missing” drives Elizabeth Partridge’s narrative about her grandmother, photographer Imogen Cunningham, until Imogen discovers photography, specifically the ability to develop her own film — and then, “Nothing was missing.” The Caldecott criteria that first comes to mind for Imogen is Yuko Shimizu’s “appropriateness of style of illustration to the story, theme, or concept.”...
Moon Song is a beautifully told and illustrated book honoring the Tlingit understanding of the relationship between darkness and light reflected in the deep winter. Michaela Goade explains in her author’s note that in winter the darkness and light cannot exist without each other, that this relationship is found in the Lingit language—and this is what...
Excellence in pictorial interpretation of story theme, or concept is one of the Caldecott Medal criteria. Tonya Engel’s oil paintings and Gwendolyn Wallace’s words in Dancing with Water tell the story of Kit and their grandfather bringing water to their community using the ancient practice of water divining or dowsing. The illustrations make clear the themes of love, resilience, and interconnectedness that are central to the story. ...
In this wordless picture book, James Ransome depicts a few hours in the lives of a mother and her son through colorfully detailed illustrations. The mother picks her son up at school at the end of the day. The pair then have dinner at a food court and go to the local public library so the boy can complete his...
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