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 March Pick
Illustrator: Yas Imamura
The cataclysmic 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora triggered worldwide climate change and a chain of historical events including Mary Shelley’s creation of Frankenstein. Black-and-white multimedia illustrations. Extensive back matter.
Our Young Reviewer Says:
I loved this book very much because it taught me a lot about how history is connected. It taught me things that I have never known before. I would have never thought that a volcano eruption would eventually lead to a woman writing a novel called Frankenstein. Most of the time, I don’t really love very informative nonfiction books because after a while of reading, I get a bit bored. I found this book extremely special because every single page in it provided so much information, and yet I never could put the book down. I truly think that I’ve never spent so much time reading a non-fiction chapter book with eagerness.
–Aika, age 13, New York, NY