31 Days, 31 Lists: 2024 Transcendent Holiday Picture Books

Time was, the holiday section of a children’s library would consist of three, maybe four, different holidays, max. You’d have your Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Halloween. Maybe 4th of July too, if your library was feeling up to it. But times have changed and I’m sure a lot of libraries around the country have taken a more open attitude towards a slew of other holidays. Today on this list you’re going to see titles about Eid, Mexican Independence Day, Día de Muertos, Passover, and more. A LOT of holiday picture books come out in a given year, but I only like a small sampling of them. These books? The cream of the very crop. See for yourself!

For a PDF of this list, please look right here.

Would you like to see previous years’ lists of holiday titles? Try these on for size:

• 2023
• 2022
• 2021
• 2020
• 2019 (Great Santa Stakeout alert!)
• 2018
• 2017
• 2016

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2024 Transcendent Holiday Picture Books

Abuelita’s Gift: A Día de Muertos Story by Mariana Ríos Ramírez, ill. Sara Palacios

Holiday – Día de Muertos

I mean, first and foremost, Sara Palacios is just the kind of illustrator I naturally gravitate towards, no matter the topic or author. We’ve seen a wide variety of Día de Muertos picture books in the last few years (last year contained two with dead dogs!) but there’s something particularly nice about the story that Ramírez has conjured up here. It tackles a problem that I’ve certainly witnessed in families before: What happens when a grandparent dies and all the photos of them are super serious and non-smiling? Julieta’s abuelita died not all that long ago and she’s determined to put the perfect gift, to honor the woman, on the altar. Trouble is, what’s the perfect gift? I mean, abuelita’s whole thing with Julieta was dancing! I like picture books where the solution to the problem is believable (in that a kid could both come up with it and pull it off) and this book certainly fits the bill. Plus, along the way it’s just a really nice celebration of grandparents who have passed. This one’s a keeper. 

Afikoman, Where’d You Go? by Rebecca Gardyn Levinton, ill. Noa Kelner

Holiday – Passover

I want to tip my hat to the marketing genius that was selling this book as, “a rambunctious Passover hide-and-seek story for fans of Where’s Waldo? and The Gingerbread Man.” That’s not an exaggeration either. Kelner isn’t fooling around, with a sneaky little afikoman (the traditional piece of matzoh that kids try to find at a Passover seder). Anyone who has ever tried to find one will know how tricky they can be to locate (not sure how fair it is when adults hide them between books on shelves). Well, in this book Noa Kelner (who has a kind of Lisa Brown style to her art) really took the whole Where’s Waldo? thing to heart. The very first two-page spread, showing all the rooms of the house, does indeed contain the afikoman but it is HARD to spot! I can attest that after searching like crazy on each and every page (I feel like Richard Scarry’s Goldbug trained me for this moment) the book does indeed play fair. It can be difficult, but keep an eye out for the afikoman’s little eyes and spindly limbs. That’ll be your best bet when trying to suss it out. Far more fun than any Passover picture book has any right to be. 

An Anishinaabe Christmas by Wab Kinew, ill. Erin Hill

Holiday – Christmas

I like a book about a specific thing that has universal appeal. I’m not going to tell you that this is the first picture book to address the concern of what precisely happens when a kid goes to another city for Christmas and worries that Santa won’t be able to find them, but it’s certainly the one that stands out the most to me. The child in this book is referred to as “Baby” and Baby has some concerns. Their family is going “home to the Rez” to have an Anishinaabe Christmas and right off the bat Baby brings up the whole, how-will-Santa-find-us point of contention. It’s sort of blown off by mom, and fortunately Baby doesn’t really dwell on it. Instead, they talk with their parents about things like the time a bear came to the Rez and all the grown-ups made a circle that left one spot open so that the bear would leave that way and go back to its own family. The book sort of follows that fun kid-logic thing where one topic leads to another (do bears celebrate Christmas?) and then ties all that into the Anishinaabe concept of Miigiwe a.k.a. Giving things away. Christmas just naturally fits into that. The art of the story by Erin Hill is a particular treat. Hill includes all these casual little moments, like the dad working a straw into its tiny hole on a juice box, and beautiful shots of snow covered trees on mountains at night and the kind of light you get when houselights fall on the snow outside. All the while, the text gently returns everything back to the Anishinaabe culture in this natural flow, never coming off as preachy or didactic. It’s just the natural course of things in the day of a single family. Backmatter includes a brief author’s note and a Pronunciation Guide. Beautifully rendered and a great addition to your holiday collection. 

The House Without Lights by Reem Faruqi, ill. Nadia Alam

Holiday – Eid

So when I was a kid my family would sometimes drive through a part of our town where almost all the houses on Christmas Eve would put out glowing luminaries. Those houses that didn’t? We’d call them grinches for holding out. Now, of course, I’m a bit older and have realized that there is such a thing as other religions in this great big beautiful world. I had not, however, really seen a picture book tackle this phenomenon in any way. Faruqi’s choice in this book is to take the house’s p.o.v. It’s interesting because in a way the house is the outsider in this story. A new family has moved into it and Christmas is coming but the folks in the house don’t really do anything about it. In fact, on Christmas itself the parents are working because they’re filling in for their co-workers who have the day off. But when Eid arrives, all that changes. Now the house has lights. Now there’s food and family and feasting. “It was finally House’s turn to shine.” Aside from the text, the house isn’t really anthropomorphized visually or anything. And as Eid stories go, I thought that this one was a really nice one. I particularly liked the Note from the Author that mentions that, “In 2033, Eid al-Fitr is projected to fall on December 25, Christmas Day.” Very cool stuff.

I Got the Spooky Spirit by Connie Schofield-Morrison, ill. Frank Morrison

Holiday – Halloween

So the whole “I Got the [Blank] Spirit” series which technically began with I Got Rhythm is going strong in this more Halloween-centric tale. Now Frank Morrison had another book out this year that I was particularly fond of called My Block Looks Like by Janelle Harper, but in terms of holiday fare, this is a favorite in a different way. We’ve never really seen Frank lean into his spooky side much before, and I like to think that this is a nice opening salvo. After all, the page opposite the publication page is this wonderful shot of a curved window looking out on the city, all odd yellow sky and long black shadows. As with all his books, when people move they don’t just move. They stretch across the page, jump, leap, and dance to where they’re going. Also, can I say how much I appreciate seeing at least one kid in this book putting a puffy jacket on over a costume? Sorry, but if you’re trick-or-treating in NYC then you better have something either over or under that costume to keep you warm, kids. By the way, when a dance party happens late in the book, I would love it if someone could tell me what the dad’s costume is with the screws coming out of his back. This one’s a hoot. 

Is This… Easter? by Helen Yoon

Holiday – Easter

Every year I make a point to read each holiday-related picture book I see. I still miss large swaths of them, but at least I make an effort. In doing so, I notice that some holidays get a lot more attention than others. Christmas and Halloween dominate, with Hanukkah, Valentine’s Day, and St. Patrick’s Day coming in the rear. Then you have the holidays that don’t really make as much of an effort. The fourth of July is a good example of this. Easter? Well that’s a tricky one. Like Christmas, you could go the liturgical route or just look at the less religious aspects. Yoon opts for the latter here, but I just have to give her credit for tackling Easter at all. It’s HARD to make an original Easter book! Amazingly, she manages to not only do so, but to make it rather delightful and funny as well. In this book you have an Easter…. Is that a bear? Sure looks like one, albeit a bear sporting bunny ears and a fluffy white tail. In any case, when it leaves a pink egg on the lawn, two different groups of dogs find it and try to determine what to do with it. The gray dogs know that eggs are food and want to eat it. The white dogs know that it’s supposed to be decorated. And the Easter Bear (which is what I’m calling it from now on) returns and shows that both suggestions can be done at the same time. The back of this book describes it as written, “with bumbling affection, good humor, and slack-jawed wonder.” It kind of bums me out when a publisher is so much better at describing their own book than I am, but in this case I won’t hold it against them. My favorite Easter book of 2024, no contest. 

The Littlest Grito by Nicholas Solis, ill. Teresa Martinez

Holiday – Mexican Independence Day

You know, considering how HUGE Mexican Independence Day is in the Chicago area (just try driving around on September 16th and see what I mean) it seems downright nutty to me that I haven’t seen more picture books celebrating that particular holiday. Surely SURELY there are others out there, right? Yet this is the first that I’ve personally seen. This book was instantly interesting to me thanks to the art of Teresa Martinez. She has a feel to her art that brings to mind animation to a certain extent. In this tale, a young girl is looking forward to her Papa shouting the traditional grito (which, the press materials describe as “an emotional shout”, which amuses me for some reason) on Independence Day. Trouble is, he wakes up feeling crummy. Now it’s up to her to give the shout herself, but can she do it? I only am familiar with the grito because of its prominence in last year’s Newbery Honor winning graphic novel Mexikid by Pedro Martín. However, you should consider pairing this book with this year’s fellow picture book Adela’s Mariachi Band / Los Mariachis de Adela by Denise Vega, ill. Erika Rodriguez Medina. In both cases, a grito is there to save the day. This book is also fun because a brave storyteller could try to get the kids in the audience to do gritos of their own when hearing it. Now, if only someone could write a Mexican Independence Day picture book set in Chicago…

Mixed Up Mooncakes by Christina Matula and Erica Lyons, ill. Tracy Subisak

Holiday – The Mid-Autumn Festival and Sukkot

I always appreciate when a book looks like a lot of the others out there but offers something entirely new of its own accord. The creators of this book include a Taiwanese and Hungarian author, a Hong Kong-based author who is raising her children as Jewish and Chinese, and a Polish and Taiwanese illustrator. In the story itself, you learn about the Mid-Autumn Festival and Sukkot, and the story does this interesting encapsulation of two myths. The first is of the archer Hou Yi and how his wife was sent to the moon by the Jade Emperor (a story I kinda sorta knew from the movie Over the Moon). The second is the story of Sukkot. All this is combined with an overall story of young Ruby creating Jewish mooncakes (which are just cool looking). There’s something about the balance of contemporary story and myth AND cooking (yes, there’s a Jewish mooncake recipe in the back) which really works well. Extra points for the copious and lovely backmatter.

On Top of Linguine: An Eye-Popping Parody by Brian Biggs

Holiday – Halloween

So you may note that I didn’t actually include this goofball title in my board book round-up earlier this month. This, I assure you, was no accident. While I feel that this book is a true delight (and if you were a particularly rich individual, I might suggest popping one into every preschooler’s trick-or-treat bag alongside a candy or two) it works far better as a holiday book than an every-day-of-the-year book. Brian Biggs just pulls out all the stops. It’s a gimmick of course (as you turn the pages, the same shudderingly realistic eyeball appears through a die-cut in a different situation), but also a book you can sing. Warm up your vocal chords and flash back to camp, parents and teachers. The “On Top of Spaghetti” song gets a new life when a skeleton’s eyeball (they have eyeballs?) pops out of his head whilst eating linguine. Biggs doesn’t usually go in for gross, but as this book is quick to prove, he’s been denying us all these years. Here’s hoping that this isn’t a one-off and that we get to see a slew of other ugh-inducing books in the future.

One Foggy Christmas Eve by Kerilynn Wilson

Holiday – Christmas Eve

Since I don’t really truck with YA I came to this book utterly unaware of its creator’s work on the YA graphic novel The Faint of Heart (though now I definitely wouldn’t mind taking a crack at it). Wilson has a delicate pen and ink style that lends itself nicely to tiny details and luscious swirls of fog. The book concerns a young girl who is used to spending Christmas at her grandparents’ house. When a terrible fog descends on her town, she is determined to get there one way or another. Solo jaunts don’t do so well (and also freak her parents out) so the three of them, dog in tow, attempt the trip with lots of lights. Briefly she is separated but rescued by what appear to be a herd of brightly lit reindeer. The girl herself, when bundled in her coat and wearing her red peaked hat, looks like a little walking star in and of herself. Wilson’s art calls to mind the work of artists like Victo Ngai. I liked the originality of the story, finding this family the kind of cozy unit you just want to sink into. A nicely original take on Christmas.

Rabia’s Eid by Rukhsana Khan, ill. Debby Rahmalia

Holiday – Eid

I love it when great authors write easy books. It may, indeed, be one of my favorite things. And Rukhsana Khan pretty much set herself up for the greatest challenge of all. Not simply to write an easy book but a HOLIDAY easy book! Oh, rarest of rare titles. Writing a good one is so difficult, I’d almost say it couldn’t be done, and yet LOOK! Feast your eyes on Ms. Khan’s accomplishments! Here’s we’ve a simple story of Rabia really wanting to fast like her sister and parents for Ramadan. Her parents tell her she can give half a day a shot if she likes, which feels like a smart parental compromise. Sure as shooting, it starts out just fine but by the time lunchtime comes around, that girl is huuuungry. Now I’m sure you’ve also seen the easy books that say they’re for early readers but definitely cheat on the vocab complexity. Khan keeps everything super simple, managing to explain an entire cultural situation while also making the family members feel three-dimensional as well. Seriously, this book should be the litmus test against which all other holiday easy books are based. I ain’t kidding. 

Santa’s First Christmas by Mac Barnett, ill. Sydney Smith

Holiday – Christmas

While we can speculate as to why Barnett has made a second Christmas picture book so close on the heels of his first (How Does Santa Get Down the Chimney?) I’m sure we all have our pet theories. Mine? Well, I loved his previous collaboration with Jon Klassen, of course I did. But that book was primarily a funny book. It tapped into that visual and verbal humor we’ve come to expect from that duo. Sydney Smith is an entirely different vibe. If you’re going to do a book with Smith then you better gird your loins and get yourself some serious emotional content. Nothing too heavy, of course, but you wouldn’t hand Smith the same manuscript that you’d hand a Klassen. The end result is that Barnett is getting a chance to stretch his emotional range with this title. It’s a surprisingly simple affair for Smith, who keeps his paints simple and his shapes relatively undetailed. That said, look at what he’s doing with lighting. Whether it’s the flicker of a fire in a fireplace or morning sun through the window, this book would be worth the read alone for just a chance to look at its art. Fortunately, the story more than holds up. I’ll just say it. It’s my favorite Christmas book of 2024, bar none. It’s not even close, honestly. Hand this to someone practicing the Christmas tradition and expect it to come out every year like clockwork as a result. Bound to be beloved.

A Stickler Christmas by Lane Smith

Holiday – Christmas

Stickler returns! Again! You have to admire Lane Smith’s affection for his spiky, stick-loving little creation. We’ve seen plenty of picture books capable of balancing humor and heart. Buckle up now for a book that balances heart with the deeply weird. Stickler, in case you missed him before, doesn’t really slot neatly into our preconceived notions of nature’s forest denizens. Nature spirits, to be perfectly frank, don’t tend to have half the energy that Stickler exhibits. He is a creature that loves and loves deeply. So much so that when Christmas rolls around he throws a red sack across his back, pops a red cap on his head, and barebacks about, giving away precious sticks to everyone he cares about. When he encounters Doug-the-Fir, he discovers the pine is distraught. Doug’s a shy guy and the local mice have trimmed him to the nines. The last thing he wants is attention, so in an act of holiday compassion, Stickler finds a very unique solution. This is the kind of book that includes what is undoubtedly my favorite Christmas book sentence (possibly ever): “It was a weird Christmas.” That it is. Hand this one to anyone who wants to elevate their holiday picture book collection with something both emotionally resonant and downright goofypants. 

Tis the Season by Richard Jones

Holiday – Christmas

Okay okay okay okay okay. I am VERY excited to tell you about this book. And I do so out of a place where I was 100% not on board with its premise. I mean, really? A “lift-the-flap Advent Calendar full of Christmas poems”? Sounds like spinach for dinner, folks. Plus how effective would this really be? How many times could you use it? And what about the poems themselves? Are they gonna be a bunch of awful ones by a bunch of dead white people? Sorry, I’ve been burned before, and that is why the magnificence that is this book truly took me unawares. Let’s tackle those concerns I had one-by-one, shall we? First up, the design. A lovely red ribbons allows you to tie the book closed for those times of year when you no longer need it. Open it up and it’s an accordion book that can open up to stand by itself on a mantle or table or what have you. The pages are thick, like you’d find in a board book. Each day has a poem and each poem has a flap that reveals something that applies to the poem. The poems themselves? You’ve got your classics (“The north wind doth blow” and all that). You’ve got your humor (Ogden Nash!). You’ve got your variety (Saijo Yao WITH a credited translator, the late great Nikki Giovanni, etc.). And then on top of all of that you’ve the art of Richard Jones who not only illustrated everything above and under those dang flaps BUT on the opposite side of the accordion pages are these huge, beautiful wintertime images. Boy oh boy, if you ever wanted something Adventy in your home, find this and grab it now before it’s gone. This is a keeper. 

The Wild Ones / Los Bravos by Megan Lacera, ill. Jorge Lacera

Holiday – Halloween

Not content to rest upon their zombie laurels (this duo was previously best known for their title Zombies Don’t Eat Veggies) the Laceras return with a tale published simultaneously in both English and Spanish that sets up an epic storyline. Honestly, reading through this, I was half convinced that I was reading a middle grade graphic novel and not just a picture book. Four kids, who all live in the same small apartment complex, are obsessed with the nearby Steelburg forest. Surely some kind of monster is lurking in one of its caves, but which monster could it be? Everyone has their favorites, whether it’s La Tunda, Loogaroo, Banshee, or Vetal, and no one can agree on who their resident cryptid might be. When their apartment is threatened with eviction thanks to evil developers, the kids figure that locating the monster and enlisting its help is the only solution, so it’s off to the woods on Halloween night. Will it work? Jorge uses a comic book style to tell the story, getting creative with the art so that when the kids discuss their monsters the page is riddled in the Ben-Day dots you associate with old comics (or Roy Lichtenstein prints). There’s a good surprise ending and plenty of colorful clues, plus who doesn’t love evil developers? They make for darn good villains, they do. Fun and exciting and just a little bit creepy. A perfect mix, no matter what language it comes in. 

Yours, Befana: A Letter from the Winter Witch by Barbara Cuoghi, ill. Elenia Beretta, translated by Genni Gunn

Holiday – Christmas

Spice up your holiday purchases around the Christmas season with something a little bit on the odd side of things. So what we have here is nice little Italian import focusing on Befana, a character from Italian folklore, who does her thing on the sixth of January. The book is written as a letter to kids from Befana herself explaining how she goes about doing things. She has a fun tone, explaining, for example, that she takes a potion of invisibility before she arrives. “You are not allowed to look at me; it’s the price of my extraordinary visit.” And, later, “And don’t be fooled by the drawings of me as an old witch. I am all-powerful and unstoppable.” There’s even backmatter (which I always adore) showing “A Few Secrets About Me”. Along the way she even has time to throw some shade on Santa, a fellow she will not name and just calls, “that clumsy oaf dressed in red.” It helps that the accompanying art is just so blooming gorgeous as well. You can’t help but respect this gal. If you didn’t believe in witches before this book, you certainly will now. 

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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