Margaret Kingsbury grew up in a house so crammed with books she couldn’t open a closet door without a book stack tumbling, and she’s brought that same decorative energy to her adult life. Margaret has an MA in English with a concentration in writing and has worked as a bookseller and adjunct English professor. She’s currently a freelance writer and editor, and in addition to Book Riot, her pieces have appeared in School Library Journal, BuzzFeed News, The Lily, Parents, StarTrek.com, and more. She particularly loves children’s books, fantasy, science fiction, horror, graphic novels, and any books with disabled characters. You can read more about her bookish and parenting shenanigans in Book Riot’s twice-weekly The Kids Are All Right newsletter. You can also follow her kidlit bookstagram account @BabyLibrarians, or on Twitter @AReaderlyMom.
It’s hard to keep up with all the latest news and discussions about children’s books and publishing, so I’m helping out by doing it for you. Here are a few articles that caught my attention recently, from “Best Of 2024” lists to a popular children’s reading program and updates on book bans.
Best Children’s Books Of The Year Lists
Both Barnes & Noble and Publisher’s Weekly have released their “Best Of 2024” book lists. My lists would look almost entirely different, but it’s still fun to see the books they’ve picked!
In middle grade, the only book included on both lists is Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell, a fantasy adventure. The PW list is a little more interesting to me, and includes Weirdo by Tony Weaver Jr. & Jes and Cin Wibowo, Carnival Chaos by Tracey Baptiste, and Uprooted by Ruth Chan. Barnes & Noble includes mostly perennial hits for kids: Hot Mess, the 19th Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, the latest in the Dog Man series Big Jim Begins, and Waverider, the 9th Amulet book. It’s not that I don’t enjoy these series, but those books are so widely publicized. I was pleasantly surprised to see The New Girl by Cassandra Calin on there, and The Misfits: A Royal Conundrum by Lisa Yee would make it onto my list as well.
I often wonder how widely reviewers read on picture book lists, though both lists contain some books I really enjoyed. PW once again has the more interesting list in my opinion, and includes Animal Albums from A to Z by Cece Bell, Being Home by Traci Sorell and Michaela Goade, and The Last Stand by Antwan Eady and Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey. My favorites on the Barnes & Noble list are I Lived Inside a Whale by Xin Li, The Dictionary Story by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston, and Why Not?: A Story about Discovering Our Bright Possibilities by Kobi Yamada and Gabriella Barouch.
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But there are some egregious misses on both lists! I will share my lists closer to the end of the year. And of course, these lists are entirely subjective, but still fun to make!
Pizza Hut’s Book It! Program Started 40 Years Ago
Pizza Hut’s Book It! program celebrated its 40th anniversary in October. The reading program started in October of 1984 and has become a core memory for a lot of millennial readers. More than 70 million people have participated in the program. I remember participating as a kid, though the closest Pizza Hut was 30+ minutes away, and with multiple siblings, I rarely got to collect on my free personal pan pizza. But just receiving the certificate was cool.
PEN America’s Banned Book Report
PEN America has released a new report documenting book bans for the 2023-2024 school year. They found 10,046 instances of public school book bans nationwide, a 200% increase from the previous school year. The most banned book was Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, and Iowa and Florida topped the list of states with the most book bans. Of the most commonly banned books, 57% were banned due to sex-related themes, 44% contained BIPOC characters, and 39% included LGBTQ+ characters. This information should come as no surprise to people in the book industry. It continues to be a frustrating, angering, and sad trend in the U.S. Once again, I encourage everyone to vote down the ballot in elections, support local libraries, attend school board meetings, and let your officials know if you love your library.
English (US) · 