31 Days, 31 Lists: 2024 Picture Book Readalouds

It isn’t enough to write a good picture book. If you want to command a room and capture the attention of your young listeners, you need to write the kind of picture book that excels as a readaloud. The truth? Not every picture book does that. Heck, a lot of them don’t even come close.

Today, we celebrate the few that do. The books that you can stand in front of a room of twitchy children and enrapture in mere moments thanks to the power of words and images (and your own vocal chords) alone.

Here’s the PDF of this year’s Picture Book Readaloud List. Interested in other readaloud lists I’ve compiled? Then check out the previous years:

• 2023
• 2022
• 2021
• 2020
• 2019
• 2018
• 2017
• 2016

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2024 Picture Book Readalouds

Big Bear and Little Bear Go Fishing by Amy Hest, ill. Erin E. Stead

“ONE DAY Big Bear says to Little Bear, I’m just in the mood for fishing.” Between getting ready to fish and waiting for the fish to show, two bears have a lovely day in this quiet book sporting a classic feel. This is kind of a funny book to kick off a readaloud list with, since it is definitely a read-aloud-in-hushed-tones kind of book. There is a place in this world for such books. Titles that exude coziness without dripping sentimentality. As it turns out, Amy Hest plus Erin E. Stead is an inspired pairing (and since this is a Neal Porter title, this is my surprised face). It’s real gentle, but not cloying. And consider its amazing readaloud potential! Like this line: “Big Bear and Little Bear pull on baggy blue pants for fishing. And boots. They stuff their feet into tall black boots. Their coats are yellow with pockets and hoods.” As a picture book author myself, this kind of thing makes me just want to hang up my hat entirely (or, god forbid, get better). As for Stead, she works in these little moments of affection between the two bears that ring true. Really authentically charming stuff.

Dog Vs. Strawberry by Nelly Buchet, ill. Andrea Zuill

I keep this running list in my head of funny illustrators I’d love to work with someday. K-Fai Steele. Helen Yoon. Eliza Kinkz, and I think it may now be time for me to add Andrea Zuill to the list as well. There’s just something universally appealing about her characters and situations, all perfectly brought to life in her latest pairing with Buchet. Anyone who has ever watched a pet have an extended relationship with an inanimate object will feel for this competition between the dog and the strawberry. Buchet’s greatest move, however, is to tell this in the voice of an announcer. This means that as a readaloud you’ll need to polish up your vocal chords. The true gift, though, is that you’ll be able to read this one to large groups and have a LOT of fun too. Be sure to put an extra emphasis on the final, “DOOOOOOOOG WINS!” and make your small listeners do big cheers when you do. By the way, if you’ve a copy where you can remove the case cover, do so. Zuill went the extra mile with the images there.

Five Little Ghosts by Lily Murray, ill. Holly Surplice

You know I’m always on the lookout for new holiday books to do during storytimes, right? And each and every year we see a slew of them coming out to varying degrees of helpfulness. Now Lily Murray went the route of taking a classic storytime song (Five Little Ducks) and applying it to ghosts that disappear one by one. Has it been done before? Probably. Are they the ghosts of the ducks from the original song? Sadly, no. But what it does consist of is a lightly spooky song with nice thick pages so that you can read it to little hands, as well as bright, well delineated images that you could see across a room during that aforementioned storytime. The endpapers are an orange so bright it’ll leave a ring on your corona for second afterwards. Are there flaps? You bet there are flaps! Do you need to do the flaps during your readaloud? You do not. The flaps are entirely your call. Regardless, this is fun, and even has a count-to-ten aspect to it at the end. 

The Good Little Mermaid’s Guide to Bedtime by Eija Sumner, ill. Nici Gregory

QUAIL! QUAIL, I say, before the fearsome magnificence of this most terrifying mermaid! This is an interesting deviation from the usual mermaid genre. Sort of a fourth-wall buster, in that the mermaid in question seems to have been given an insipid book called “The Good Little Mermaid’s Guide to Bedtime” and she is reacting with appropriate venom. With each namby pamby page of the book, saying things like, “The good little mermaid opens her home and invites fresh water into her room. A filtered room will create a restful atmosphere,” our mermaid heroine responds with, “The only thing I invite into my home is dinner. The only atmosphere I know is the atmosphere of FEAR that follows me wherever I go.” This is accompanied by an image of her preparing to devour a string of innocent fishies. With the aid of Nici Gregory, there are lots of nice Jaws references and this delicate walk between truly scary and what is clearly a mermaid playing at being truly scary. I imagine the reading aloud of this book would be a sheer delight. I can already hear my bad little mermaid voice (ya gotta make it scary but not too scary). This is good stuff. 

Hank Goes Honk by Maurie Powell-Tuck, ill. Duncan Beedie

Look at that cover. Look at that sneaky goosie side-eye. Duncan Beedie, I salute you. That’s some good book jacket work right there. And it occurs to me that when you sit right down and think about it, there should be a lot more irate geese in our picture book literature. Think Untitled Goose Game: Picture Book Edition (IYKYK). In this story we have Hank. Hank is a minor menace, not on the same scale as, say, Saracen from Fly By Night, but even a minor menace is still a menace. The readaloud possibilities with this one are pretty good. On one page you can hear how Hank interrupts with a “HONK”, which will give the person reading this book ample opportunities to say the word loudly. The repeated use of the word “obnoxious”? Par excellent. The text? Funny. The goose? Funny. The art? Worthy of your love, time, and attention. This is one to enjoy. 

Jam, Too? by JaNay Brown-Wood, ill. Jacqueline Alcántara

When I used to do storytimes, I too often was a bad librarian. I had the five or six books that I knew by heart and that would KILL in an average storytime, and incorporating anything new into my routine was unnecessarily challenging. Still, at the same time I was completely aware that a storytime based on the same-old, same-old isn’t just unfortunate. It can be potentially inequitable, particularly when we have SO many great books coming out each and every month. Finding the best readalouds can be a challenge, though, so allow me to be your guide. Are you looking for a book that has interactive potential (you can get the kids to imitate different instrument sounds), a good rhyme scheme, and the potential to get kids up and dancing? In this story a kid (could be any gender) watches as one-by-one different musicians add their own particular instruments to the beat started by a single man with a conga. The setting is sun-drenched and happy, and with its easygoing invite for everyone to join, it reminds me a bit of fellow 2024 title Uno Más, One More by Silva López. Consider pairing the two together!

Kadooboo! A Silly South Indian Folktale by Shruthi Rao, ill. Darshika Varma

Leaving his friend Anya’s house with a delicious bag of kadooboo, Kabir just can’t remember its name. Is it book-oo-doo or dub-oo-koo or duck-oo-boo? A fun and silly readaloud with a surprise ending. Aw. This is super fun. Rao explains in the back of the book how she adapted the original tale into this fun, silly kid-friendly version. Personally, I think it works really well. I was expecting, with the whole taking-sweets aspect, for the book to veer into a Little Red Riding Hood kind of story, but it’s not that at all. Plus the ending actually made me snort quite loudly in my work lunchroom, which I consider the highest of praises (wasn’t expecting to actually laugh with this book). I warn you, though, that you’ll be quite hungry for kadooboo before the tale is through.

The Last Day Julian Was My Best Friend by Jody Jensen Shaffer, ill. Joanne Lew-Vriethoff

Foof! I don’t usually expect such an emotional wallop when reading through your average picture books, but I gotta give Shaffer credit for both the title of this book and the concept. This ratchets up the tension all the way through, and I have to assume that if you were to read this aloud to a group you’d have every kid listening on the edge of their seats. Anthony and Julian are definitely friends and Shaffer is going to give you every play by play of “that day”. When Anthony commits a crime against his best friend, it could go wholly unnoticed, but this is essentially the picture book version of “The Tell-Tale Heart”. The sheer guilt of the sin (Anthony took Julian’s best marble and pretended it was missing) causes Anthony to confess during a sleepover. You can debate the ending and whether or not the book is playing fair with its title or not, but I think that just means that it gives you good fodder for discussion with a group of kids. Let THEM hash it out! A surprisingly tense read. 

Miss MacDonald Has a Farm by Kalee Gwarjanski, ill. Elizabet Vuković

Now you can’t just take a famous song and set it in a picture book and not expect me to want to sing it out loud in a storytime, can you? Thing is, and this strikes me as funny every time, I sometimes suspect that the creators of such books don’t actually try out their books on kids before they publish them. I mean, if the cadences are all wrong, you’re going to notice the first time you try it aloud. Particularly when there are eyes upon you. This book? The cadences work just fine. What’s more, it’s an ideal book to do if you’re a librarian performing at your local Farmer’s Market (I know you’re out there). Get those buskers to join you in a rousing song. Just make sure you rehearse a little bit first.

Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta by Aimee Lucido, ill. Mavisu Demirag

Incredible bouncy cooking energy infuses this delightful tale of a girl and her pasta loving family. Guaranteed to make you hungry! Surely SURELY this cannot be the first pasta-related picture book to realize the rhyming potential of Italian foodstuffs. And yet, I say that I can’t come up with anything to compare to this. It has all the rhythm and bouncy energy of Bee Bim Bop (and that’s the highest compliment I can bestow). We always need books that would work well in a storytime. This book earns your respect. I think we just found a readaloud winner! 

The Rattlin’ Bog by Jessica Law, ill. Brian Fitzgerald, sung by the Speks

There are songs turned into picture books, and then there are picture books made out of songs. What sort of sets this little number apart from the pack is the fact that my fellow environmental children’s librarians found its focus on bogs in its backmatter to be particularly toothsome. Now sadly there’s no QR code included that will allow you to link to the Speks’ version of this song, but honestly Spotify alone probably has ten different variations that’ll give you the tune (and the notes are printed in the back). The back of the book literally discusses bogs, their wildlife, how they help us, and what’s beneath them (“even very old butter!). There are even sections on how an egg becomes a bird and a seed becomes a tree. All this is accompanied by beautiful and peppy art by Brian Fitzgerald. It’ll pop across a room, no question. If you’re doing a nature-related or Earth Day storytime, this little number has your back. Singing optional (but highly recommended). 

Rocket Ship, Solo Trip by Chiara Colombi, ill. Scott Magoon

I’m a softy. There are just some images I encounter in picture books that win me over, simply because they manage to strike the dual winning combo of my never having seen them before AND they melt my cold cold heart with a sweet original image. Take this sweet rhyming tale about a little rocket making its first solo voyage to the stars. Colombi works in a lot of really clever science in what, with another author, could have been half-assed and entirely fictional. She is joined by the ever clever Scott Magoon, who isn’t afraid to put a little accuracy into his seemingly simple images as well. But the thing that delighted me so much? The rocket isn’t just held by its Ground Control building but hugged as well, which is SO SWEET! Now the book rhymes on top of all of this, and that’s a difficult business. It can be exceedingly difficult to rhyme a science-related title, but by gum Colombi manages it. Then, along the way, you learn about the rockets that drop satellites into space, space stations, the Northern lights, boosters, and then a little you-gotta-believe-in-yourself-when-you-try-new-things chutzpah to round it all out. It’s one of those books you’d discount without a thought if you didn’t pick it up. Don’t be that person. Pick it up and incorporate it into your preschooler STEM/space storytime.

Starlight Symphony by Buffy Silverman

Silverman’s books with Lerner always tend to contain a fair amount of stock photography, but whatta gorgeous collection of it there is. This book takes the reader to the moment when the sun sets and the sounds of nighttime nature come into their own. Each animal has its own particular sound, which is fun to say. Things like “Eee-oh-lay!” for the wood thrush or my personal favorite, the bittern. “Oong-KA-chunk!”. You can hear the readaloud potential here already, can’t you? Imagine a nature-based storytime where you get all the kids to make the sounds with you. Oo! It could be a jammie time in the evening! Or an outdoors evening storytime in the woods! Lots of possibilities here. The text is nice and simple but introduces a whole slew of different animals. And the photography is interesting because it has to confer the idea of taking place at night. I did read this wondering if there was some work done on the edges of some of these photographs. If so, it’s well done. No one would be able to tell. The end result is a fairly consistent visual feel for nighttime critters and their sounds. 

There Are No Ants in This Book by Rosemary Mosco, ill. Anna Pirolli

Good news! There are absolutely ZERO ants in this book. Except that one… and that one… and that one. Watch as our reluctant picnic-er discovers just how cool these tiny creatures can be. This one really won me over. I started out skeptical since we see a LOT of fourth-wall busting picture books these days (you know – the ones where the narrator is talking directly to the audience). But Mosco really just packs this book full of ant facts in such a fun and natural way. I learned something (the turtle ant’s big flat head was completely new to me) and I thought it did a rather expert job of combining a readaloud text with facts in an elegant, subtle manner. There’s some pretty great backmatter here, but the story itself is nicely fictionalized, making this an ideal candidate for my Informational Fiction category later this month. Meanwhile, it’s the very rare readaloud that includes a slew of nonfiction elements. Absolutely fun, whether you’re reading it to one kid or to a group. Bonus: Ants! The hot critter in picture books of 2024.

This Is Not My Lunch Box! by Jennifer Dupuis, ill. Carol Schwartz

A series of lunchboxes reveal some pretty peculiar contents. Explore each one and try to guess the animal that eats what’s inside. Fun, interactive, and just a little bit gross! This is really neat. It’s a nice mix of introducing kids to the different kinds of foods that animals eat alongside a good old-fashioned gross-out factor. The illustrations beautifully render every grub, maggot, and mealworm to its best angle. It reminds me of books like Hi, Pizza Man, with its keen readaloud factor as well. I particularly liked that in the backmatter it quizzes the kids on which animals are herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores too. There are a lot of programming possibilities with a book of this sort.

This Is the Way in Dogtown by Ya-Ling Huang, edited by Katie Cotton, designed by Zoë Tucker

I am NOT the only person who thinks of The Mandalorian when I read this title, so feel free to put this book on display on May the 4th this next year (IYKYK). However, aside from that title there isn’t really anything remotely Star Warsy about this book. Not unless Star Wars is totally into dogs these days (it ain’t). This book is one of those utterly charming books filled to brimming with tiny characters living their tiny lives on a bunch of big pages. The title, for the record, is a reference to the song of the same name. Can’t recall it? Here’s the first page: “This is the way we brush our teeth, / brush our teeth, brush our teeth. / This is the way we brush our teeth, / early in the morning. / Brush, brush, brush!” Oh. You storytime presenters can already feel how good this book would be in a storytime, right? I mean, it has BIG pages that read well across the room and you can totally sing the whole thing. Some (but not all) of the pages lend themselves to hand motions, and if you wanted to you could paperclip the pages together so that you’re only doing certain spreads (we’ve all been there) for the shorter attention spans in your audience. You’re essentially following a classroom of kids throughout the day (though it’s the kind of classroom that takes swimming lessons as part of a school day, which has ME jealous certainly). As you go through the book multiple times you start getting fond of different individual characters and their lives. I also appreciated the WIDE range of emotions on the page. It’s not all sunshine and roses since kids are laughing and crying in equal measures on many of the pages. It’s just a freakin’ realistic little book, I tell you. This one? It’s a keeper. 

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That’s it for today! Be sure to stay tuned for more lists on 2024 titles. The full roster is here:

December 1 – Great Board Books

December 2 – Picture Book Readalouds

December 3 – Simple Picture Book Texts

December 4 – Transcendent Holiday Picture Books

December 5 – Rhyming Picture Books

December 6 – Funny Picture Books

December 7 – CaldeNotts

December 8 – Picture Book Reprints

December 9 – Bilingual Books for Kids

December 10 – Math Books for Kids

December 11 – Books with a Message / Social Emotional Learning

December 12 – Fabulous Photography

December 13 – Translated Picture Books

December 14 – Fairy Tales / Folktales / Religious Tales

December 15 – Wordless Picture Books

December 16 – Poetry Books

December 17 – Unconventional Children’s Books

December 18 – Easy Books & Early Chapter Books

December 19 – Comics & Graphic Novels

December 20 – Older Funny Books

December 21 – Science Fiction Books

December 22 – Fantasy Books

December 23 – Informational Fiction

December 24 – Gross Books

December 25 – Science & Nature Books

December 26 – Unique Biographies

December 27 – Blueberry Award Contenders (Celebrating the Environment)

December 28 – Nonfiction Picture Books

December 29 – Nonfiction Books for Older Readers

December 30 – Middle Grade Novels

December 31 – Picture Books

Filed under: 31 Days 31 Lists, Best Books, Best Books of 2024