Children’s Book Committee
The Children’s Book Committee (CBC) was founded more than 100 years ago to help parents, teachers, and librarians choose the books that children will find captivating and transforming. Every year it produces comprehensive annotated book lists for children aged infant through 18.
Our Mission
The CBC reviews over 6000 titles each year for accuracy and literary quality and considers their emotional impact on children. It chooses the best 600 books, both fiction and nonfiction, which it lists with annotations according to age and category.
The Children’s Book Committee strives to guide librarians, educators, parents, grandparents, and other interested adults to the best books for children published each year. The list includes more than 600 titles chosen by reviewers for literary quality and excellence of presentation as well as the potential emotional impact of the books on young readers. Other criteria include credibility of characterization and plot, authenticity of time and place, age suitability, positive treatment of ethnic and religious differences, and the absence of stereotypes.
To contact us, please email bookcom@bankstreet.edu.
Children's Book Committee June Pick
Statistics intertwined with deeply personal anecdotes of the global majority expose systemic racism in schooling. An extensive list of recommended readings, resources, and insightful short bios of all contributors.
Our Young Reviewer Says:
In “Everything I Learned About Racism I Learned in School,” the author Tiffany Jewel discusses heavy topics such as separation of students through prejudice disguised as ‘educational differences’. She touches on how people outside of the school system would never be able to recognize how racially separated schools are. One example given is that special education classes are almost all people of color who have been labeled with a learning disability. Read more…
–Logan, grade 8, Port Washington, NY.