As we head into a new year, I thought I’d take a moment to highlight some of S’s favorite picture books of 2025 that did not get individual posts. Without further ado, the unsung picture book heroes of the 12-24 month age range:
Favorite Picture Books of 2025: The Classics
Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown / Clement Hurd)
The Runaway Bunny (Margaret Wise Brown / Clement Hurd)
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault / Lois Ehlert)
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (Bill Martin Jr. / Eric Carle)
The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle)
Madeline (Ludwig Bemelmans)
Where’s Spot? (Eric Hill)
Favorite Picture Books of 2025: The Vehicles Set
Yellow Copter (Kersten Hamilton / Valeria Petrone)
Little Excavator (Anna Dewdney)
Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site (Sherry Duskey Rinker / Tom Lichtenheld)
Favorite Picture Books of 2025: The Animals Set
Ursula Upside Down (Corey R. Tabor)
Little Red Hen (Lyn Calder / Jeffrey Severn) (specifically this Golden Books edition from 1988)
The Sky is Falling! (Mark Teague)
Apples for Little Fox (Ekaterina Trukhan)
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type (Doreen Cronin / Betsy Lewin)
Dear Zoo (Rod Campbell)
Favorite Board Books of 2025
I Love My Tutu Too! (Ross Burach) (Scholastic, Inc., 2020)
Rosh Hashanah: New Year, Gather Near (Leah Weber / Taryn Johnson)
Absolutely anything by Sandra Boynton, with a special shout-out to Silly Lullaby and Moo, Baa, La La La!
P is for Pastrami (Alan Silberberg)
Little Blue Truck Feeling Happy (Alice Schertle / Jill McElmurry)
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And a few closing thoughts on S’s preferences this year:
- Short, punchy sentences are key. I can get away with reading significantly more text per page if each sentence is around 5-7 words. If a page has 30 words on it, breaking those 30 words into 5-6 sentences is far preferable to 2 sentences.
- Refrains are toddler gold.
- S was not nearly as into rhyme as I would have expected. Of all the books on this list, only 5 of them are rhyming, and the rhyme is not the reason S likes the book. Punchy, repetitive sentences that S can anticipate and participate in (a la “Click, clack, moo!”) are far more important for getting S engaged in the text than rhyming is.
- Subject matter is key, but idiosyncratic. Even having the subject of interest in a background image will often suffice to have S ask to read the book. Combining multiple kid-friendly topics optimizes chances of hitting on a preferred topic at any given time.
- Flaps, cutouts, and other forms of physical interactivity got high marks this year. This ran the gamut from the holes in The Very Hungry Caterpillar to textures in Little Blue Truck Feeling Happy (which quickly surpassed its namesake because it had feathers and wool and a shiny blue truck to touch).
Hope you all have a great new year — see you in 2026!