Best Children's Books of 2007

Chic shoppers vie to buy the latest “nothing” in this wry, expertly controlled spin on The Emperor's New Clothes.

Lush rhythms, both visual and verbal, turn a wisp of a plot, about a girl's difficulty falling asleep in her urban house, into an exemplary bedtime book.

Personified numerals join hands with elaborately costumed characters in this inventive, visually dazzling interpretation of favorite nursery rhymes that feature numbers.

Gravett uses just the four words of the title (with a fifth for the punch line) and her virtually iconic watercolors both to tell a story and to juggle a series of visual tricks.

Fairy-tale figures conduct readers on a journey from the numbers one to 10 and back again; Jay's crackle-glazed paintings feel like missives from a world where it's Once Upon a Time 24/7.

The hand-crafted aesthetic of Azarian's tinted woodcuts emphasizes the value of tradition in this view of American history as experienced by 12 generations of a New Hampshire farm family.

A dachshund and a teddy bear serve as protagonists in three simple stories so true that the conclusions seem inevitable even as they take readers by surprise.

Related with jewel-like simplicity, a bear cub's feelings of friendship toward the leaves of trees on his tiny island teach him about the seasons.

Text and three-color art pay exuberant homage to classic children's books in the tradition of Virginia Lee Burton and Wanda Gág.

Willems reprises the illustration style of Knuffle Bunny in a sympathetic sequel, where the stuffed bunny becomes a surprise vehicle for a new friendship.

This posthumously published fantasy/adventure telescopes the themes of Alexander's landmark Prydain Chronicles into a single potent volume.

Boosted by the “narrator's” witty cartoons, Alexie's semiautobiographical novel relies on jazzy syntax and outrageous jokes to throw serious themes about adolescence on an Indian reservation into high relief.

Bray critiques Victorian society in this far-ranging gothic fantasy, a triumphant conclusion of the trilogy begun in A Great and Terrible Beauty.

Secrets overshadow three generations of women in this taut, keenly observed novel about the complexities of family and love.

With its off-balance marriage of the hilarious and the tragic, Cameron's YA debut holds readers in the grip of its narrator, a desperately alienated, hyper-articulate 18-year-old Manhattanite.

Set during China's Cultural Revolution, this autobiographical novel about the daughter of educated parents makes a lasting impact through its tightly focused narrative and finely nuanced characters.

Using the witty vernacular of an 11-year-old freeborn boy, Curtis brings together an arresting historical setting (a real-life haven for runaway slaves in mid-19th-century Canada) and physical comedy before launching a plot that changes the tenor of the novel from folksy to harrowing.

The late Dowd's stirring debut follows an Irish teen's struggles in the wake of her mother's death and a disturbing murder in her close-knit community.

This British debut breaks the mold of books about eloquent dying teens; Downham holds nothing back as her narrator determines to spend her final months living to the fullest.

A web of criminal machinations infiltrates every aspect of an impossibly brilliant boy's life in this thoroughly entertaining and engrossing novel.

Johnston refuses to sacrifice the humanity of any of her characters in this explosive tale about race and racism in 1950s small-town Tennessee, powerfully couched in unobtrusively lyrical prose.

Kinney's uproarious “novel in cartoons” captures the myriad traumas of junior high existence, as conveyed in the deadpan journal of protagonist Greg Heffley.

Rarely do YA readers find such uniformly strong short fiction as in Lanagan's dark and provocative fantasy collection of 10 stories, striking for their beautiful, quirky language and deep psychological insight.

As they combat evil forces, this witty, action-packed debut's lead characters—a girl with a proclivity for magic and a well-dressed living skeleton—trade repartee that recalls Hepburn and Tracy in its ongoing, affectionate contest of verbal one-upmanship.

Connecting grief, rage and violence, this masterfully controlled novel set at an elite private school dissects the unspoken dynamics between bullies and their intended victims.

Anticipated ever since Harry Potter first appeared back in 1997, this massive conclusion to the singular series resolves once and for all the fates of its addictively entertaining cast.

Schmidt adeptly evokes the tensions of the Vietnam era in this alternately humorous and poignant coming-of-age story of a Long Island seventh-grader, supported by a fully dimensional cast.

Selznick crafts a sumptuous epic about a Parisian orphan, a mysterious automaton and the earliest beginnings of cinema, expertly using lengthy sequences of charcoal drawings to evoke the highly visual medium of film.

Über-logical Emma-Jean regards her fellow seventh-graders with bemused scientific detachment in this winning comedy of manners.

Nifty plotting, involving irregularities in the passage of time, mines a rich vein of Irish faerie lore and magic for this meditation on the losses brought by modernization.

A crisply authoritative first-person narration and a gritty plot line shot through with glimmers of fiercest hope make this lengthy fourth installment of the President's Daughter series a novel to luxuriate in.

Showcasing Jenkins's trademark detailed cut-paper collages, this stunning primer on both animals and colors imaginatively depicts more than 60 creatures.

Sís's art was his salvation during his youth in Cold War–era Prague; he uses it flawlessly in this gripping account of his path to freedom.

This startling wordless tale chronicles an immigrant's attempt to build a new life through lush, sepia-toned illustrations of an enigmatic alternate universe.

Dog, Robot and other mute creatures suffer all-too-human ordeals in this elegiac story of friendship, loss and forgiveness.