12 Of The Best New Children’s Books Out January 2023

This standalone follow-up to The Proudest Blue is a lovely story about kindness, friendship, and family. Two big things are happening at school today: it’s picture day, and Ms. Ramirez wants the students to create their own worlds and draw pictures about their worlds. Faizah wears a special red dress passed down from her mother and sister for school pictures. For the school assignment, she draws a world full of kindness, where everyone is a friend and helps those around them. When Faizah realizes she and her sister aren’t matching for their school pictures, her imaginary world of kindness inspires her friends at school to help out.

Best-selling novelist Emma Straub makes her picture book debut in this adorable and funny read-aloud about hats. Hats can be many things: the roof of houses, leaves that fall just the right way on top of heads, perfectly balanced books, ice cream bowls. All it takes is a little imagination for a whole new world of hats to open up. Gómez’s delightfully cute illustrations are a perfect companion for Straub’s simple and funny prose. This picture book is sure to inspire a lot of hat play for kids.

This is a super sweet intergenerational picture book centering an Indigenous grandmother and granddaughter with warm and tender illustrations from one of my all-time favorite illustrators, Julie Flett. Becca wants to be just like her grandma, whether she’s watching her grandma dance in a powwow, bead moccasins, or play basketball. With Grandma’s help, Becca learns how to do these activities and more, and in the process, finds out some things she never knew about her grandma. Kim Rogers, Wichita, writes a lyrical and playful homage to the special relationship between grandmothers and granddaughters in this picture book.

This heartwarming picture book reminds me of my own quiet, shy childhood. Stanley dreams of tap dancing in front of an audience, but he’s too shy to tell anyone about his dreams beyond his two pet mice. Instead, he practices tap dancing after school in empty classrooms and hallways as he helps the janitor clean. However, his secret is discovered when the school installs security cameras. The principal thinks he should participate in the school talent show, but how could he share his dancing with the world? Accompanied by energetic, retro-style illustrations, this picture book encourages readers to express themselves and share their talents.

Author Anne Wynter bases this gorgeous, intergenerational picture book on her childhood experiences growing pecan trees. Wynter seamlessly integrates two parallel timelines: that of the grandmother as a child planting a seed and a future where grandchildren gather around and in the pecan tree that seed becomes, watching birds hatch and having picnics in its shade. It’s a lovely, poetic read that feels like a classic. Daniel Miyares’ illustrations are warm and rich.

7th-grader Henrietta Weldon, or Henri for short, has dyscalculia, a learning disability that makes math especially hard. Previously, Henri attended a private school to get more one-on-one tutoring for her disability. However, her mom is starting a PhD program, and with the family strapped for cash, Henri will now attend public school, where her older brother and sister also attended. She’s excited about going to a new school and soon makes friends. However, Henri’s sister Kat hates her new friends for good reasons, and Henri is finding her new schedule — which includes soccer and poetry — overwhelming. How can Henri balance new friendships, her passions, school, and a sister she fights with constantly? Her mom thinks she should concentrate on school and drop everything else, but Henri disagrees. This is a fantastic new middle grade novel that is funny and super relatable.

This wrenching and beautifully written middle grade novel entwines two timelines. In the present, 13-year-old Matthew begrudgingly moves in with his 100-year-old great-grandmother to ride out the Covid-19 pandemic while his journalist father works in France. While helping his great-grandmother, he discovers more about her past, and the novel switches to the perspectives of three Ukrainian cousins during the 1930s, revealing devastating details about the Holodomor — a Soviet government-created famine that killed millions of Ukrainians. While it sounds like a complicated narrative — with multiple points of view and timelines — Marsh seamlessly integrates the alternating viewpoints and timelines. It’s a moving, relevant story about an important historical event largely unknown in the U.S., inspired by Marsh’s family history.

12-year-old Trevor, or Trev for short, is a talented artist. However, when his stepdad is imprisoned for hitting his mom, Trev decides he needs to be able to use his hands for a different purpose — to protect his mother and sisters. Trev begins taking boxing lessons, but with his emotions spiraling with all the stress he’s under, the physicality of the sport has him reacting in too-violent ways. Maybe he should return to art and help his family and community that way, but how will art protect his loved ones? This brief but packed novel explores toxic masculinity and Blackness in a nuanced, moving way and packs both a literal and metaphorical punch.

This fantasy retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” is perfect for kids who love the movie Brave. When Princess Harbor Rose was born, one of her fairy aunts cursed her. To keep her safe from the prophesied war and death that she’s been cursed with, Harbor’s mother whisks her away to a remote island where more of Harbor’s magical aunts live. No children live on the island, and Harbor has both a magical and lonely childhood. When the prophecy’s time arrives, and the boy Peter — the prophesied hero — arrives, Harbor realizes that to save her people and her family, she’ll need to love herself, curse and all, and become her own hero.

After a school shooting leaves Simon as the only surviving member of his classroom, his family decides to move to a place where no one knows him and where he can have some peace and quiet — the National Quiet Zone in Grin and Bear It, Nebraska. The internet is banned in Grin and Bear It so scientists can better study space, and Simon can return to a somewhat anonymous childhood. Simon wants to start a new life and leave the past behind him, but, of course, there’s no way to leave that kind of trauma behind. His friends Kevin, who is Filipino American, and Agate, who is autistic, try to help Simon. But the three get into mischief when they fake alien signals to fool the scientists. Bow tackles really tough topics in this novel with grace and empathy while also threading in laugh-out-loud humor throughout.