by Madeline Tyner Freimuth, Merri V. Lindgren, Megan Schliesman, and Tessa Michaelson Schmidt
© 2025 Cooperative Children’s Book Center
(This essay originally appeared in CCBC Choices 2025.)
Everything starts with the books.
We say this often at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC). As a statewide book examination center for children’s and young adult literature serving the UW-Madison campus and Wisconsin library and education communities, we receive review copies of thousands of new books for children and teens each year.
Librarians, teachers, and university students visit the CCBC to find out about new and recommended books. We provide outreach, education, and reference services statewide, including intellectual freedom information supporting access to books for youth. The CCBC’s annual diversity statistics document our analysis of the books we receive, providing data to inform discussions about who is creating books for youth, and who is represented in the books.
To create CCBC Choices, this annual recommended list of books for children and teens, we read (and listen) voraciously and with intention throughout the year. Our goal is to identify high-quality books for children and teens from birth to grade 12, and to compile a list that is broad and inclusive. We don’t have a rubric or list of criteria, but we home in on books we find engaging, entertaining, enlightening, and/or eye-opening. We bring a critical eye as we consider accuracy and authenticity. The things we like not only vary from book to book, but often from reader to reader. We discuss our questions, concerns, and differences of opinion as part of the selection process.
This edition of CCBC Choices recommends 251 books for children and teens. All were published/released in the United States or Canada in 2024. The selections range from books we are sure will have broad appeal to those we know are likely to resonate with a much smaller audience. But we are confident that every book we’ve chosen will find a place in the hearts and minds of young readers.
The books in CCBC Choices 2025 contain multitudes, because children and teenagers contain multitudes. As you explore the list, you’ll find books on a wide range of topics and themes, books in a variety of formats and narrative styles, and books featuring subjects and characters reflecting diverse identities and experiences. There are funny books to delight and deeply moving books that evoke tenderness. We feature accounts of history that expand knowledge and encourage critical thinking, and stories both real and fictional that can foster empathy and understanding, uplift, and inspire. There are translated books (14 of them!) that bring faraway places a little bit closer, and wildly imaginative books about things that can’t possibly happen—right?
The welcome increase in diversity among creators of books for children and teens over the past decade has resulted in a significant increase in the number of diverse books we receive each year, especially with regard to race and ethnicity but also including disability, religion, and LGBTQ characters and subjects. Many books we selected for this edition of Choices reflect this welcome change, because more diverse books inevitably means more outstanding books among them.
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 each also informed by the tastes and opinions of those making the selections. Choices is a bigger list than many; even so, we know that because we don’t get every book published and can’t possibly read all of the more than 3,000 books we receive (although we do examine each one), there are surely a few stellar offerings that we’ve missed.
These days selecting books can feel more fraught for librarians and teachers than ever before. The censorship landscape and resulting fear demands that we provide collective, continued, meaningful support not just for books and young readers, but for one another.
Books are often described as magical, the alchemy of reader and text having the power to comfort, affirm, inform, transform. But it doesn’t take believing in magic to believe that books are enchanting and essential, supporting literacy and learning and enriching the lives of young people. And we all—authors, artists, publishers, librarians, teachers—play critical roles in bringing the two together.