Today we are pleased to present our tentative list (subject to change!) of eligible 2025 books that we hope to cover on Calling Caldecott this season. Remember, to be Caldecott eligible, a book must be published in the U.S. in 2025 and the illustrator must either be a U.S. citizen or resident. 

Drum roll, please... 

• Aggie and the Ghost (Forsythe) 

• Anything (Stead/Zhang) 

• Big Enough (Linke) 

• Cat Nap (Lies) 

• Cranky, Crabby Crow (Tabor) 

• Dancing with Water (Wallace/Engel) 

• Dear Acorn (Love, Oak) (Sidman/Sweet) 

• Dragonflies of Glass (Rubin/Chapman) 

• Every Monday Mabel (Awan) 

• Fireworks (Burgess/Chien) 

• A Forest Song (Hall/Turk) 

• A Gift of Dust (Brockenbrough/Martinez-Neal) 

• Good Golden Sun (Wenzel) 

• The History of We (Smith) 

• How Elegant the Elephant (Hoberman/Frazee) 

• How Sweet the Sound (Alexander/Palmer) 

• Imogen (Patridge/Shimizu) 

• Let’s Be Bees (Harris) 

• Making Light Bloom (Nickel/Paschkis) 

• Moon Song (Goade) 

• Nunu and the Sea (Kung) 

• Our Lake (Kang) 

• A Place for Us (Ransome) 

• Song of a Blackbird (van Lieshout) 

• To See an Owl (Cordell) 

• Your Farm, Your Island, and Your Forest (Klassen) 

We will be posting twice a week (for the most part) from now until the YMA announcements in early 2026. Keep in mind: we aren’t associated with the REAL committee. The books featured on Calling Caldecott are ones we think the real committee will be looking at seriously — but only they know what's going on in the room where it happens. Along the way, you will have two opportunities to nominate eligible books, and we’ll finish up with our own mock Caldecott poll in mid-January. 

Have we missed anything? Are there books you think are front-runners that we haven’t included? Let us know what's on YOUR lists!