by Madeline Tyner Freimuth, Merri V. Lindgren, Megan Schliesman, and Tessa Michaelson Schmidt
© 2026 Cooperative Children’s Book Center
(This essay originally appeared in CCBC Choices 2026.)
After the retirement of long-time, beloved CCBC Assistant Director and Librarian Megan Schliesman in spring 2025, the three remaining librarians spent a good portion of the year engaged in recruiting a new staff member. As we brainstormed interview questions, one aspect of the job kept coming up in our conversations: the reading.
As a statewide book examination center for children’s and young adult literature serving the UW-Madison campus and Wisconsin library and education communities, every year the CCBC receives review copies of thousands of new books for children and teens. While we cannot possibly read every one of them, we do read hundreds each year in search of excellent writing and illustrations, high-interest (as well as niche!) topics, and authentic representation of diverse perspectives and characters. We’re looking for texts that present information accurately, creatively, and accessibly. We want stories that surprise, delight, move, inspire, and amuse.
The amount of reading we do each year is significant. It requires a substantial time commitment, and it was imperative that we be clear about this when speaking with candidates. Yet the reading does not feel onerous, because it informs the CCBC’s services in every sense. From our statewide outreach, education, and references services; to our intellectual freedom information service, which supports professionals navigating challenges to books in their communities; to the collection of our annual diversity statistics, which document the identities of book creators, characters, and subjects, the reading we do is ultimately in service of young people.
CCBC Choices 2026 recommends 231 books for children and teens, all of which were published/released in the United States or Canada in 2025. Just as the young readers who pick them up possess a range of tastes, interests, identities, and experiences, the selections in this edition of Choices are diverse in topic and theme, format and narrative style, genre, representation, and setting. There are nonfiction titles that entertain and inform in equal measure, books that are astonishing in their creativity, and novels for every kind of mood. There are picture books that depict common childhood experiences with nuance and care, stories that offer a helping hand to readers in tough times, and silly tales that simply delight. There is all of this and more.
CCBC Choices is one of many professional lists that offer perspectives on excellence in publishing for youth, each with its own scope and purpose and compiled by unique individuals with their own opinions and tastes. Despite our best efforts to read widely, there are exemplary titles that slip past us each year.
These days it sometimes feels as though reading, whether for pleasure or to learn, is in danger of becoming a forgotten art and devalued life skill. CCBC librarians past, present, and newly hired remain committed to helping children and teens—in partnership with teachers, librarians, publishers, authors, artists, and parents—find those books that will speak to them, teach them, inspire them, and provide relief from life’s stressors. The right book at the right time can be life-giving. Our task is to help get them into the right hands.