Announcing the Top 100 Picture Books Poll!
I admit that I am a bit in awe of my readers. Though it comes down to abject pandering, I am fairly certain that you guys are smarter than I am. That you have better taste. Better style. Better joie de vivre.
So I am officially announcing a big poll. The poll to beat all polls that have come before. Announcing . . .
The Top 100 Picture Books of All Time Poll
To clarify everything right off the bat, I’m talking about picture books that Americans are familiar with (which is to say, oh ye librarians of other nations, anything that has been published here at some point). So what I want to know is, what do you feel are the best picture books of all time?
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Here are the rules:
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Vote for your top ten picture books of all time (not just this year or last year) by 11:59 Eastern on March 31, 2009. This will NOT include early readers (like Green Eggs and Ham or My Friend is Sad). I know, I know. It hurts me too. But the line has to be drawn somewhere. If you like, I’ll make a separate Best Early Readers of All Time poll someday. That day is not today.
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List these books in your order of preference. So your #1 picture book would be the one you feel is the most important, and so on. I will be giving your first choice 10 points, your second choice 9 points, and so on.
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Submit these books to me at Fusenumber8@gmail.com. Write "Picture Book Poll" in the subject line. I’d rather you didn’t leave your votes in my comment feature on this site since it’s finicky and difficult to use (plus I want everyone’s votes to be a surprise).
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If you like, you can submit a justification for each title. At the beginning of April I will tally up the totals and I will pull from the submitted pieces why one reader or another liked a particular book (naming the reader, of course). That way we’ll be able to hear from a whole mess of people why they love one book or another. I will then count down from 100 to 1 the top choices of what folks feel the best picture books of all time are.
Full credit to the Top 100 Comic Book Runs poll over at Comics Should Be Good for giving me the idea. Vote early or late in the month, howsoever you choose. I’m mighty excited.
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About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.
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My difficulty with this is that so many of my favorites are just that because I loved them as a child. I mean, is Ferdinand truly one of the top picture books of all times or just a personal favorite of mine? Comics would be easier because not everyone is into them and they aren’t so associated with warm and cozy memories. But most of us had picturebooks read to us (or we have fond memories of reading them to our own children and relatives) and so I’m guessing some of those are going to end up on our final list to you. Just saying.
To my mind that’s what makes this so interesting. I didn’t ask for what was considered critically to be the best but what people personally love. We’ll get a far more interesting list that way.
Nice idea for a contest, Betsy. I’m already making a list in my head.
I’m mighty excited too. Outstanding idea and I eagerly await results, as well as being curious about what my own final 10 will be. I love the fact that submissions will come from so many differing perspectives.
The one I loved when I was little. About cowboys. Must’ve read it ten thousand times. Don’t remember the title or anything, but it was THE BEST. For me as a kid. I hope I never see it again, that would ruin things.
Monica’s right, of course, but the whole ‘mystic chords of memory’ thing is part of what makes picture books so special as a category. It does tend, though, to create a 10-15-year black hole between the books you loved as a kid and the ones you discover as an adult; most lists of this kind skew heavily toward heritage titles and recent titles at the expense of the middle. Given the age range and general informedness of this blog’s readers, I don’t think that’s going to be an issue here. I’ll be very interested to see what everyone comes up with. I’m already working on my picks.
Wow, this sounds like a lot of work for you, but I’m really excited to see the list! Great idea!
I’m really looking forward to seeing the results, too.
“we as Americans are familiar with”
Why do you say that? Why does this have to be Amerocentric? Since when does the internet stop at the borders of the US? Can’t your poll be international? Believe it or not the School Library Journal is read by people outside the USand so are picture books…..If you wish to keep it Amerocentric, please rename your poll “Top 100 American Picture Books”.
Rowr! Love that “Believe it or not” bit. Very spicy. Now if you will notice I didn’t say American picture books. I said picture books Americans are familiar with. Which is to say, picture books that have been published in America at some point. Babar would fit. So too Madeline, anything by Mem Fox, Michael Rosen, etc. I don’t want to keep it Amerocentric (Ameri-centric? Americanotric? hee hee) but at the same time if the greatest picture book ever written was in Catalan, it probably won’t get many votes. I’ve amended the statement in the piece as such.
What do you say about a book like Arnold Lobel’s F&
This is going to be good – great idea! Just to make sure my picks are truly tops, I’ll be delving into the history of Catalan picture books over the next week. An early spoiler to my Amerocentric list? “El Timbaler del Bruc”
Sam, I’m going to guess that my horrendous comment feature cut off your question about whether or not Frog & Toad would count. I’d call it easy reader, unfortunately. Not really a picture book. Still, ultimately it’s your guys’ call. I’m leaving the definition up to you, though I will gently suggest that we leave easy readers for another poll.
I would have put on top of my list Frog and also Toad, but Fuse is right: theirs are not technically picture books.
I don’t understand the distinction between picture books and “early readers”. Maybe I’m confused by the two examples you gave since they seem very different from books like Frog and Toad. I would consider the Elephant and Piggie books to be picture books. Same with Green Eggs and Ham. Help?
John, picture books are generally read aloud to kids, whereas easy readers are meant to be read by kids who are learning to read. Not that there isn’t crossover, of course. But many of Dr. Seuss’s books were written with the emerging reader in mind.
I think easy readers are generally twice as long, pagewise, as picture books. 32 pp for PBs and 48 for ERs.
Ah. Here’s a quickie definition off the top of my head. An early reader is a book with simple words, easy for children just beginning to read. They tend to all be the same size, around 8.5 in. x 5.9 in. A picture book, in contrast, tends to be a much larger format, varying from 11 in. x 8.1 in. to 10 in. x 10 in. The words are sometimes simple and sometimes complex. There is little doubt that Frog & Toad books are a-maz-ing titles. But for the sake of simplicity I’m not including them in this particular poll. An easy reader poll would cover that (and I would love to see 100 of the best easy books listed somewhere sometime, since they are an elusive group). Does that help?
Oops! Rose beat me to the punch. What she said.
I’d like to add something about the distinction between early readers and picture books. Picture books should be a perfect integration of words and pictures. Ideally, if you read a picture book without looking at the pictures, you shouldn’t be able to understand much about the story, or at least you would miss a huge part of it. Early readers’ focus is the text. The pictures help with the comprehension, but an early reader text could exist without them. If you listen to Arnold Lobel reading Frog and Toad, it’s obvious that those stories are already wonderfully accomplished without pictures. Of course we are lucky Lobel felt like adding his drawings…
I think I understand the difference when I see it but, I don’t think I’d ever classify any Seuss book I’ve ever read as being anything besides a picture book. Same with Mo Willems’s books. I don’t care what the publisher or writer intended, nor do I care to measure the dimensions of the book or its page count. I hope I’m not being troublesome. 🙂
I will have to go work on my list now. Thanks!
Can wordless books count?
Of course! A picture book’s a picture book, after all.
Oh, I am so in. I’ve got a feeling that all the ones that don’t make it into my top ten are going to appear in a blog post.
I submitted mine and keep thinking of more! (sobs)
For me, the perfect picture book is The Very Busy Spider. It has a)repetition, b)farm animals, c)farm animal sounds, d)it’s tactile, e)rhyming. Other books are closer to my heart, but The Very Busy Spider is #1, for me.
Then send that one to me as your #1 with another 9. Gimme!
Another distinction between picture books and early readers is that early readers are written with what is called a controlled vocabulary. Words that will be easy for a begining reader to decode. Pictures books can have a very sophisticated vocabulary. Dr. Seuss books in the early reader format say: ”
Argh! The end of my comment got cut off. Dr. Seuss Early Readers say: “I can read it all by myself” on the cover. His picture books do not have that message.
I’d love to subscribe through my google reader so I don’t miss the announcement of the picks, but every time I look at the RSS feed link here, I’m completely overwhelmed. Help?
Not a problem. Look at the top of the screen. See where it says RSS? Click on that. Then scroll down until you see the seventh listing. That’s the link to my RSS feed. Just use that link and you should be good to go. Let me know if you have any questions!
Does “What Do You Say, Dear?” count as a picture book? I love, love, love, LOVE that book.
Well, we put it in the etiquette section, but I think that’s just a formality. Absolutely, count it as a picture book.
Oh, no. I just learned about this poll now, and only have 2 and a half hours to come up with my list. No pressure here!
Whew! Just sent it at 11:57! Wouldn’t have taken so long, but I accidentally closed my email before sending and lost the whole thing! I think that some of th Dr. Seuss books should have counted. FOr instance, Horton Hears a Who is not really an EZ reader, nor is How the Grinch Stole Christmas, in my humble opinion.
Actually, they did count. The only Seuss titles that didn’t count were the easy books he created like “Cat in the Hat” and “Hop on Pop”. The others, his picture books, were allowed. Ah well.
I came to this site by search engine. I am looking for good early childhood books to put in the library, at teh new early childhood center. Are the results posted some where on the web? I would love to see them
Yup. Pretty much just Google “Top 100 Picture Books” and it will come right up.