Shelf Awareness's Best Children's & YA Books of 2022


Through printing issues, delays and supply-chain disruptions, this year has still brought a ton of splendid reading material for children and teens. Our 2022 Best Children's and YA Books encompass age ranges and genres. Included are gorgeously illustrated picture books that cover everyday experiences--both nonfiction and fiction--as well as stories of mythic proportions and cat-sized fears. Our middle-grade and young adult titles include fiction and nonfiction that embrace courage, despair, terror and triumph. Click here to see our reviews of the top kids' picks for 2022. (Shelf Awareness's Best Adult Books will be announced December 2.)

Picture Books
Boobies by Nancy Vo (Groundwood Books)
Every Dog in the Neighborhood by Philip C. Stead, illus. by Matthew Cordell (Neal Porter Books)
Kapaemahu by Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson, illus. by Daniel Sousa (Kokila)
Magnolia Flower by Zora Neale Hurston, illus. by Loveis Wise, adapted by Ibram X. Kendi (Amistad Books for Young Readers)
Mina by Matthew Forsythe (Paula Wiseman Books)
Mushroom Rain by Laura K. Zimmermann, illus. by Jamie Green (Sleeping Bear Press)
Nana, Nenek & Nina by Liza Ferneyhough (Dial Books)
Powwow Day by Traci Sorell, illus. by Madelyn Goodnight (Charlesbridge)
The Flamingo by Guojing (Random House Studio)

Middle-Grade and YA
Ain't Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds, illus. by Jason Griffin (Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum)
All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir (Razorbill)
Choosing Brave: How Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till Sparked the Civil Rights Movement by Angela Joy, illus. by Janelle Washington (Roaring Brook Press)
Family of Liars
by E. Lockhart (Delacorte Press)
I'm the Girl by Courtney Summers (Wednesday Books)
In the Key of Us by Mariama J. Lockington (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Moonflower by Kacen Callender (Scholastic)
Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert (Flatiron Books)
Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams's Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration by Elizabeth Partridge, illus. by Lauren Tamaki (Chronicle Books)
The Ogress and the Orphans by Kelly Barnhill (Algonquin Young Readers)
The Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

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