Picture Books

Whether you’re a parent, teacher, librarian, or grandparent, here you’ll find the best children’s picture books to read to kids for any occasion and for all ages. These are carefully curated book lists and reviews of fiction and nonfiction children’s picture books.

The best picture books are spacious enough to allow the illustrations to narrate much of the story. In other words, the books aren’t text-heavy but have a perfect text-to-picture ratio.

(You’ll know if they don’t because your children will get bored while you’re reading!)

Kids naturally love funny stories with memorable characters. But they also benefit from reading any well-written story that illuminates the world for them in some way — whether it’s wordless or prose — about all sorts of topics including problem-solving, feelings, divorce, a new baby, animals, history, and so forth.

Good themes that you’ll find include friendship, family, growing up, identity, and more.

Don’t forget to include nonfiction titles in your reading selection, also. This helps readers learn new things and introduces informational reading for meaning.

FIND PICTURE BOOKS BY TOPIC HERE.

Discover my top picks for each year below!