Best Books of 2025: Picture and Chapter Books for Preschoolers

My family loves books, and our library history of hundreds of checkouts for the year attests to that! If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably a book family too. As book families, we’re always looking for more good reads, so I asked my daughter what her favorites were for the year so we could share them with you. As I and my 3 year old scrolled through our library history, she kept saying “I like this one. And this one. And this one!” but I was able to work with her to get you a somewhat shorter list of 33 books for your consideration! I’ve organized them by type, so hopefully you don’t get lost!

First up, we’ve got the…..

Funny Books

Don't Feed the Coos! By Jonathan Stutzman - a cute book about a kid that fed some pigeons and then couldn’t get rid of them no matter how hard he tried. My kids especially loved how the pigeons interacted with the kid throughout the book.

How to Babysit a Grandpa by Jean Reagan - the name says it all. A grandfather is tasked with watching his grandson while the parents have date-night… but the kid thinks it’s his job to entertain and care for his grandfather.

Sam and Dave Dig Hole by Mac Barnett - an adventure book that keeps surprising you at every turn as two boys dig a hole in their backyard. Your kids will be laughing at the duo as they keep making the wrong decisions while digging for treasure.

The Wolf the Duck and the Mouse by Mac Barnett - This is another win from the author and illustrator team of Barnett and Klassen. A twist on the big bad wolf story has a duck and mouse swallowed up by a wolf and then proceed to set up a very comfortable house inside the wolf. There’s a twist at the end too!

Click, Clack, Moo by Doreen Cronin - a Caldecott Honor book tells of a group of cows that go on strike in order to get blankets from the farmer. Read it. You’ll love it!

A Wall in the middle of the book by Jon Agee is a book that uses the pages as a division between two different worlds. One appears safer than the other at first, but the human on the “safe” side quickly attempts to escape to the other side.

Young audiences can enjoy a good chapter book too, especially if read by an amazing narrator in audiobook form. These are some of my daughter’s favorites.

Chapter books for read-alouds or audiobooks:

The Princess in Black Series by Dean and Shannon Hale - a beginning chapter book series about a princess that has an alter ego that protects the kingdom against monsters that find their way through a portal near her castle. There is absolutely no horror, and the graphics are extremely cute. My daughter loves pretending to be a princess and a superhero, so this series was a quick hit.

Magical Animal Rescue by E.D. Baker - this author is better know for chapter books for older children, but this is an early reader series about a girl helping magical animals. My daughter listened to it on loop for a few weeks when I introduced it.

The Wild Robot Series by Peter Brown - this series at a 4th grade reading level has taken the homeschool world by storm since its publication, and my daughter in particular has loved listening to all 3 books about the Robot Roz who learns to speak with animals and adopts an abandoned gosling.

The Very, Very Far North by Dan Bar-El This gentle story at a 4th grade reading level is about an adventurous polar bear making friends in the Very, Very Far North. Each animal he interacts with possess a unique personality that delights the kids listening. It is kind of

in the style of another favorite of my daughter’s.

Winnie The Pooh by A. A. Milne - Both books are a classic for a reason, and my daughter has begged to listen to these over and over again. If you haven’t listened to the audiobook with Peter Dennis performing it, you’ve got to check it out!

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White – another classic beloved by small children for decades! If you haven’t heard the audiobook with a full cast and narrated by Meryl Streep, then you need to checkout that version!

The Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder has been a favorite of both of my children from the age of 2. We love the audiobook with Cherry Jones reading which also includes the fiddle tunes that Pa plays.

Since we’re talking about some classics, let’s cover my daughter’s favorite classic picture books from this year.

Classics:

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey are both favorites in my house, especially if they are the wonderbooks or VOX that has the button for read aloud of the physical books. Libraries typically have a few of these on their shelves, so you may want to check out your own library.

Roxenboxen by Alice McLerran is a fun story about a bunch of kids living in the desert who create their own pretend city through natural materials and found objects. The city grows over the years as the children grow.

The Penny Series by Kevin Heneke is a fun collection of stories about Penny learning life lessons from the perspective of a small child. New baby in the house? Penny learns how to enjoy having a baby sister. No one likes your singing? Penny goes through it too.

There were also a few non-fiction books that my daughter loved.

Nonfiction:

What Miss Mitchell Saw by Hayley Barrett is a biography of woman who discovers a comet which makes her world famous.

You Wouldn’t Want to Live Without Electricity by Ian Graham is part of the beloved series covering science and history topics at an early elementary level. If I get one of these from the library, it’s usually the first out of the book basket at home.

Since we started some culture studies this fall, we’ve got some favorites from there too!

Books about other Cultures:

Tiny Feet Between the Mountains by Hanna Cha is a fable based in Korea a few hundred years ago about a tiny little girl who volunteers to go to the mountains and find out why the sun has disappeared. 

The Turtle Ship by Helena Ku Rhee tells a fictional account of the idea behind the historical turtle ships built centuries ago by Korea. The young boy in the book grew up to become a legendary admiral who defeated Japan by using the turtle ships.

Maneki Neko: The Tale of the Beckoning Cat by Susan Lendroth retells the legend of the Japanese beckoning cat figurines seen at storefronts all over Japan.

The Origami Master by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer - teaches children the importance of leaving nature in nature for others to enjoy and for animals to be able to live as they were meant to, even if you happen to find a brilliant bird who can do origami.

Random Good Reads:

The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld share how a child has big feelings, but none of the animals that came along could help him navigate through their bad advice. The last animal to come through is a rabbit who just sits and listens and the child unburdens himself.

The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt puts the classic poem into beautifully haunting illustrations. You might want to preview this one for your particularly sensitive kids.

Diary of a Spider by Doreen Cronin is a hilarious journal of life as a spider kid who is friends with a worm. Checkout the hole series if you enjoy this one!

Knight Owl by Christopher Denise was an accidental discovery one day, but my entire family fell in love with the owl who overcame a ton of obstacles to become a knight. In the end, he is the one who successfully defended the castle from a dragon through his unique way of thinking.

Sparky! by Jenny Offill - if your child wants a pet and you tell them they can have one if…. “It doesn’t need walked or bathed or fed.” [camera on that page in the book], then you may not want to read this book with your child. The girl in this story finds a creative way around her mom’s requirements, and – after much research – adopts a pet sloth. The girl learns to accept the limitations of her pet by just being happy to actually have one.

Wordless books are a great way to get your child to tell YOU a story! Two favorites in our house were...

Wordless Books:

Mr. Wuffles! by David Wiesner which tells the tale of ant sized aliens landing in a house only to be attacked by the cat.

A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka tells of a dog who played too rough with her ball and popped it. My very empathetic daughter loved the story because of the sweet ending.

Final category! 

Crazy Books:

The Book with No Pictures by B. J. Novak - We all love good illustrations in our picture books, but… could your child possibly ever love a book that has absolutely no pictures in it at all? I’m not talking about a chapter book here, but rather a picture book that celebrates that it has no pictures. It brags that the book is not boring because “everything the words say, the person reading the book has to say. No matter what.” The book then forces the reader to do all sorts of funny things like singing a song that goes “glug glug glug my face is a bug… I eat ants for breakfast right off the ruuuuuuug!” Meanwhile the book also forces the reader to beg to stop reading the book. My kids were absolutely shocked the first time I read it to them, and then they were in continuous laughter each and every time they asked me to read it to them afterwards.

The Wrong Book by Drew Daywalt has a bookmark enjoying the first few pages of the story… and then things start to go wrong with flowers saying “chugga chugga choooo choooo” and dogs being called bicycles. The entire book has the bookmark trying to fix the errors and getting so very frustrated that he eventually gives up and joins in on the craziness.

The Book that Did Not Want to be Read by David Sundin - Just like the first book in the category, this book is not for the faint of heart because it will do everything within its power to make reading it as difficult as possible. Between transforming itself into a steering wheel that the adult then has to read as it turns one way then the next, then making up words that are just hard to pronounce, to shrinking the text to something almost illegible. Your kids will love forcing you to read this over and over again because it makes you act ridiculous. 

That’s it! I hope you found at least one new read for your family.