American-Style Lists of the Best Books

American-Style Lists of the Best Books

These days, it's become trendy to put together lists of good children’s books. There are plenty of ways to go about it. You could ask well-known writers, publishers, and translators. Or you could ask the kids and teens themselves. You could run big literary contests and pick the winners. Libraries can compile their own lists too. Or you could just make (yet another) personal list of books you love.

But there’s an even more organized and systematic approach. The American branch of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) does just that — every year, it publishes a list of the most outstanding international books and books set in other countries. The catch: the books must be published or at least available for sale in the United States. And there are a good number of them — though still a drop in the ocean compared to the sheer volume of children’s books published in the U.S. each year.

Now, when we in Russia think about "international" books, we usually mean translations. But in the U.S., the term can apply to books published in the UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and even India — even if they’re written in English.

To create this list of notable international books, a committee of eight members and a chair is formed. Each member serves a two-year term, with four new members and four returning ones participating each year. One of the returning members becomes the chair in their third year.

I’m now in my second year on this committee. Most of the members are librarians (some retired) and college professors who teach children's literature — usually alongside other subjects. They’re scattered all over the vast expanse of America: Utah, Ohio, Idaho, Minnesota, Tennessee, Wyoming, Maryland. I think I may be the first translator and one of the first children’s literature specialists who regularly reads, speaks, and thinks in a language other than English.

From February through November, interested publishers send out physical copies of books (no PDFs allowed) to every committee member. The mail carrier starts to look at you suspiciously — the boxes are huge, though often they contain just two or three books and a lot of air. By mid-summer, your apartment starts to look like a library buried in cardboard. Other members have it easier — most live in houses. The books range from simple board books for toddlers to massive 600+ page novels for teens. About half are aimed at young kids — though not small in size, they’re often quite thin. There’s some nonfiction too, though not much.

The reading strategy is as follows: the eight committee members are divided into pairs, and each pair is assigned a quarter of the alphabet. I got authors whose last names begin with A through F (and sometimes it felt like they made up half of all submissions!). For each book you like, you have to write a short — three-sentence — summary, and a brief justification — three or four sentences — explaining why it's a good book. If you don’t like a book, you don’t need to write anything.

Besides your assigned section, you’re also expected to read all the books that at least one other committee member liked. And there are quite a few of those. Every couple of months we vote, and by the end, we come up with a list of titles to be discussed at our in-person meeting in December.

Some stats: over the course of the year, we received 437 books. Most were originally written in English. But we did get some translations — 112 books were translated from other languages, most often from French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Italian, and Japanese. A couple came from Dutch, Korean, Turkish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Chinese. One was translated from Hebrew, one from Bengali, and one — The Fool’s Cap by Daria Wilke — from Russian. One book about Russia, A Year Without Mom, was written in English by young American illustrator Dasha Tolstikova. (Note to Russian publishers: the text and illustrations are both wonderful.) Several other English-language books were set in places like India, Korea, Laos, Poland, Ethiopia, Bolivia, and Turkey.

As I mentioned, picture books dominated — even though American authors are already churning out a flood of them. The topics are varied, but animals of all kinds — real and imaginary — are especially popular. Bears are the front-runners: Bear Surprise, Bears Can’t Read, Bear and Hare Go Fishing, and The Little Polar Bear and His Underwear (the original titles usually rhyme, too). Bunnies, foxes, and wolves are everywhere. And dinosaurs — lots and lots of dinosaurs. The quality of both text and illustrations varies, but some are true gems.

A total of 153 books made it to the final round of discussion. They were split into four age categories: from toddlers to 2nd grade, 3rd to 5th grade, 6th to 8th, and 9th to 12th grade (remember, U.S. school goes through grade 12). The committee’s job was to choose the best books in each category.

In the end, 42 books were selected: 13 for young children, 9 for grades 3–5, 13 for grades 6–8, and 7 for high schoolers. Every title on the list absolutely earned its spot, but I still miss quite a few books that didn’t make it (even though it was apparently a very strong year — this year, there are fewer books, and they’ve left a much weaker impression so far — but the year isn’t over yet).

The final discussions lasted two days. The committee included seven Americans (five librarians and two professors), one professor who had recently moved from Greece, and me — a translator and children's literature expert originally from Russia, but now living in New York for nearly 20 years. It’s amazing how differently people can perceive the same book. Everyone has their own taste and ideas about what deserves a place on the list. Books on “important” topics (like the struggles of African children) sometimes pushed out books I personally found much more compelling. Educational values often took precedence over artistic ones.

The debates could get pretty intense — especially when someone fought for their favorite book. Two of us fought hard to get the second volume of Vango by Timothée de Fombelle onto the list. Both my colleague and I insisted that such a brilliant adventure novel had to be included — but the vote showed that our enthusiasm for adventure wasn’t widely shared (the first volume didn’t make the list the previous year either).

On the bright side, the recently translated Norwegian hit Waffle Hearts by Maria Parr did make it into the final list — a beloved book in Russia too. Other well-known titles included The Sea by Annika Thor and My Brother’s Secret by Dan Smith, recently published in Russian. Among the books for younger kids, I only noticed one crossover: Why Dog Has a Wet Nose by Kenneth Steven.

My “biggest” problem started in December — what to do with the 400+ books taking over my apartment? Most committee members have school library connections. I didn’t. So I had to look for someone to give them to. Even after handing out Christmas gifts to every child I knew, the mountain of boxes barely shrank. Then I found the perfect place — a reading school in Brooklyn run by teacher Steven Huff. It’s called “Still Waters in a Storm,” and it’s a space where neighborhood kids come to read and do homework. Steven also teaches them Latin, rightly believing it will help with other languages. My donation nearly doubled their collection.