The Best Books of 2020: Kids and Young Adult!

Again, it bears pointing out: the great pandemic of 2020 cast a shadow over the whole of the book world, and that shadow felt darkest when the book categories were at their most frivolous and playful. This was true with murder mysteries for obvious reasons, true with romance novels in which love conquers all, and it was pointedly true with books for young people. Many of those books spent months in warehouses locked away from their intended recipients, but they’ve seen the light of day eventually, and there were gems. These were the best of them.

10 The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper (Bloomsbury)

Stamper’s tale of two teen boys finding romance in the shadow of a high-profile space program is a wise-beyond-its-years combination of fun and pathos, managing to keep half a dozen plots in careful orbit around each other on the way to a touching ending.

9 The Couch Potato  by Jory John & Pete Oswald (Harper)

This terrific writer-artist team continues their cycle of gently persuasive picture books, this one about a good-natured but sedentary spud who learns that there’s a whole world out there beyond his collection of remote controls.

8 The Legend of King Arthur-a-tops By Mo O'Hara, Illustrated by Andrew Joyner (Harper)

What better follow-up could there be the Mo O’Hara and Andrew Joyner’s sublime Romeosaurus and Juliet Rex than this uproarious re-imagining of the story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table? Which dinosaur will be the one to succeed in drawing Red Calibur from the stone and becoming monarch over all? 

7 Strange Exit by Parker Peevyhouse (Tor Teen)

Two teens are tasked with waking people up from a dangerously seductive computer simulation in this compulsively readable YA sff story from Peevyhouse, who invests her two main characters with great amounts of both believability and sympathy. 

6 The Ocean: Exploring Our Blue Planet by Miranda Krestovnikoff & Jill Calder (Bloomsbury)

This oversized overview of the ecology, topography, and biology of Earth’s oceans explores the whole world of the world’s waters in glorious illustrations and very accessible exposition, like all the best kids books equally interesting to both young people and adults.

5 Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls (Mariner)

This YA novel by David Nicholls is innovative in some ways - one of the main characters in the framing story is nearing middle age - but tremendously satisfying in its old-fashioned emotional impact, as a man on the brink of marriage can’t get a relationship from his past out of his mind. 

4 Who Loves Books? By Lizi Boyd (Chronicle Books)

This tall, durable (we can hope!) kids flip-book leads little children very gently and very entertainingly into the magic of books - not only their inherent magic but also the allure of their physical nature, the turning of pages and all. The animal characters in these pages won’t be the only ones falling in love with books.

3 The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (HarperCollins)

This beloved and perennially-reprinted children’s classic here gets one of the most beautiful editions it’s had in years. The pages are bright and inviting, and the illustrations by Adelina Lirius add a gorgeous element that will make this edition a treasured heirloom for generations.

2 All He Knew by Helen Frost (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

This YA novel about the tenacious bond that develops between a deaf boy and a WWII conscientious objector is remarkably touching. Helen Frost does a marvelous job of creating both these main characters, and the story is powerfully moving. 

1 The Next President: The Unexpected Beginnings and Unwritten Future of America’s Presidents by Kate Ressner, illustrated by Adam Rex (Chronicle Books)

This, the best Kids & YA book of 2020, arrives at the fever-pitch height of political polarization in the US and does the seemingly impossible: gives readers a glowingly optimistic, bi-partisan book about the sheer hopeful possibilities of the Presidency.