The Best Children's Books of 2005

I still remember learning how to read. I learned from the books about Dick and Jane, and maybe Spot was in there too. All I remember was that the reading lesson was better than trying to go up in front of the class and paint some silly picture with the watercolors on that large paper flip-chart thing. Then I got my set of Golden Book encyclopedia when I was about five or six. I still have them. I would pick one book out each day and go through it, reading the information and looking at the pictures. Then, as I got older, it was the Time-Life books. They were thin books with a lot of pictures in them written about medicine, science, and the environment. Later, in grade school, we had a book club. We would order the paperbacks from a catalog and eagerly await their arrival each month. I remember getting the books and then holding each one in my hand, looking at the cover, and then opening it and smelling the fresh ink. First it was the mysteries like Nancy Drew, then Science Fiction by the likes of Issac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, and finally the classics by Hemingway and the Red Badge of Courage by Stephan Crane.

The American Library Association recently announced the winners of its annual children’s book awards. Children’s literature today tends to mirror society’s diversity, with topics of the honored books ranging from friendship to suicide to nontraditional families. Take Rae Perkin’s “Criss Cross” for example. It is the story of four 14-year-olds who face challenges and contemplate life and love. The story may be familiar, but the author tells it in many forms from song lyrics to haiku.

This years Caldecott Medal, first handed out in 1938, goes to Chris Raschka for his book “The Hello, Goodbye Window.” The story is about a girl at her beloved grandparent’s house.