Explore our curated collection of children's books book reviews and recommendations.
Eric Carle's children's picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar has sold more than 50 million copies and been translated into more than 60 languages, earning its place as one of the most enduring works in the picture book canon — a deceptively simple story of metamorphosis that doubles as an early-education tool covering counting, days of the week, and the concept of natural change.
Feb 13, 2026
Originally published in 1963 and recognized with the Caldecott Medal the following year, Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are remains one of the most celebrated children's picture books ever produced, voted the number one picture book in a 2012 School Library Journal reader survey and sold over 19 million copies worldwide as of 2009.
Feb 13, 2026
First published in 1947 and reissued in a board book edition by HarperCollins, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, with illustrations by Clement Hurd, is one of the most enduring children's bedtime books ever produced — a simple, deliberate ritual of farewells that has sold an estimated 48 million copies by 2017 and continues to sell approximately 800,000 copies annually as of 2007.
Feb 13, 2026
Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden, first published in 1958, is a Carnegie Medal–winning children's fantasy novel that has endured for more than six decades as one of the most celebrated works in British children's literature. When twelve-year-old Tom Long is quarantined with his aunt and uncle after his brother contracts measles, a grandfather clock that strikes thirteen opens the door to a vanished Victorian garden — and to Hatty, a lonely girl who becomes his inseparable companion across time. The novel's meditation on time, loss, and friendship has earned it a place among the great works of the genre, and a 2018 anniversary edition from Greenwillow Books, illustrated by Jaime Zollars, has introduced it to a new generation of readers.
Feb 13, 2026
Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, first published in book form in 1911 and available in a HarperCollins reprint edition illustrated by Tasha Tudor, remains a cornerstone of English children's literature — a richly structured story of a difficult, neglected child whose encounter with a locked garden, a hidden boy, and the wild Yorkshire moors reshapes her entirely.
Feb 11, 2026
Jacqueline Wilson's children's novel The Bed and Breakfast Star puts ten-year-old Elsa — a ginger-haired, joke-cracking girl who dreams of becoming a comedian — at the centre of a story about family hardship, resilience, and finding light in genuinely difficult circumstances. With illustrations by Nick Sharratt, the book follows Elsa and her family as they are forced into a cramped, run-down bed and breakfast after her short-tempered stepfather Mack loses his job, and charts her attempts to hold her world together with humour. Young readers in the 9–11 age range will find both a vivid, strongly characterised narrator and an unflinching look at child poverty that is rare in fiction aimed at this audience.
Feb 9, 2026Search
Rating
Active Filters
Search
Rating
Active Filters
Showing 49 - 54 of 54 reviews
