CCBC Choices 2024

The CCBC Choices is a best-of-the-year list created annually by the librarians of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center. This year’s edition selected 238 books for children and teens published in the United States or Canada in 2023 that encompass a wide range of subjects, topics, and themes.

We would like to congratulate X. Fang and Cherie Dimaline on their CCBC Choices selection!

Dim Sum Palace
By X. Fang
48 Pages | Ages 3-7 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781774881989 | Tundra Books
Liddy is so excited about going to the Dim Sum Palace tomorrow with her family that she can’t sleep. So when a delicious smell wafts into her room, she hops out of bed, opens her door and steps into . . . an actual palace of dim sum! There are dumplings, baos, buns and more delicious treats than one girl can possibly eat. Liddy just has to take a bite, but she slips and falls . . . into a bowl of dumpling filling. The chefs are so busy rolling, folding and pinching dough that they don’t notice they’ve prepared a most unusual dumpling for the Empress – a Liddy dumpling! Worst of all, she looks good enough to eat . . .

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls
By Cherie Dimaline
280 Pages | Ages 14+ | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735265639 | Tundra Books
Winifred has lived in the apartment above the cemetery office with her father, who works in the crematorium all her life, close to her mother’s grave. With her sixteenth birthday only days away, Winifred has settled into a lazy summer schedule, lugging her obese Chihuahua around the grounds in a squeaky red wagon to visit the neglected gravesides and nursing a serious crush on her best friend, Jack. Her habit of wandering the graveyard at all hours has started a rumor that Winterson Cemetery might be haunted. It’s welcome news since the crematorium is on the verge of closure and her father’s job being outsourced. Now that the ghost tours have started, Winifred just might be able to save her father’s job and the only home she’s ever known, not to mention being able to stay close to where her mother is buried. All she has to do is get help from her con-artist cousin to keep up the rouse and somehow manage to stop her father from believing his wife has returned from the grave. But when Phil, an actual ghost of a teen girl who lived and died in the ravine next to the cemetery, starts showing up, Winifred begins to question everything she believes about life, love and death. Especially love.

CCBC Choices 2015

Congratulations to Charis Cotter and Kate De Goldi! The Swallow: A Ghost Story and The ACB with Honora Lee, are included in CCBC Choices 2015, the annual best-of-the-year list of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC).

The SwallowThe Swallow: A Ghost Story
Written by Charis Cotter
Hardcover | 320 Pages | Ages 9-12
ISBN: 978-1-77049-591-3
“Spooky tension, friendship and compassion permeate this exquisitely plotted middle-grade ghost story. …the story structure weaves its way in and out-riveting and tumbling with tension but never obvious, leaving the readers wondering if anything is really as it seems. …readers will seesaw between chills and snorts of laughter. When Cotter delivers the final twist, it is a denouement that becomes a springboard for greater revelations that lead to even greater reader satisfaction. Middle-grade storytelling at its very best-extraordinary.” – Starred Review, Kirkus Reviews

The ACB with Honora LeeThe ACB with Honora Lee
Written by Kate De Goldi
Illustrated by Gregory O’Brien
Hardcover | 128 Pages | Ages 10+
ISBN: 978-1-77049-722-1
eBook: 978-1-77049-723-8
“De Goldi’s story of an only child’s determined efforts to know and love her grandmother deserves a place in the pantheon of quiet, word-of-mouth classics . . . Perry is funny and bewitching, and all of the other characters, even the walk-ons, are equally engaging. O’Brien’s curious diagram-illustrations pay appropriate tribute to Perry’s admiration for the unconventional.” – Starred Review, Publishers Weekly

CCBC Choices 2012

Congratulations to Marthe Jocelyn and Nell Jocelyn! Their book, Ones and Twos, is included in CCBC Choices 2012, the annual best-of-the-year list of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC).

Ones and Twos
Written and illustrated by Marthe Jocelyn and Nell Jocelyn
Hardcover | Ages 2-5 | 24 pages
ISBN: 978-1-77049-220-2
“This delightful concept book brings visual literacy to the forefront…. The simple descriptive verses … are spot-on to reinforce images of numeracy, sorting, paring, common-object recognition, and the daily lives of young children. Each page or spread is illustrated with creative, engaging collages on paper, textured fabrics, and items…. The charming collages are the stars of the show and will inspire curiosity” – Starred Review, School Library Journal

“… Jocelyn’s imaginative collages help create a book rich in playful details, with a storyline told through pictures that provide depth to the concepts explored in the text…. Although the text is very spare, words like ‘lone,’ ‘swoop,’ and ‘chums’ provide verbal interest…. Sophisticated and yet endearingly simple, Ones and Twos can be enjoyed by both very young children and the adults who read it with them.” – Starred Review, Quill & Quire

“With their first collaborative effort, this mother-daughter team proves that they are a duo to watch. Marthe Jocelyn’s text is perfect in its simplicity, the short phrases and vocabulary just right for toddler audiences, while the rhythm and rhyme are spot-on. Nell Jocelyn’s picture-book debut is a visual feast of colors, patterns and textures. Found papers and objects, cut paper, folded elements, newspaper and string are all collaged into a wonderfully cohesive whole. A worthy contribution to any toddler bookshelf … and hopefully just the beginning of a long partnership.” – Starred Review, Kirkus Reviews

Tundra Book Group