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The New York Times Best
Illustrated Children’s Books of 2015

By THE NEW YORK TIMES OCT. 28, 2015

Every year since 1952, the Book Review has convened an independent panel of judges to select the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books. Judged purely on artistic merit, it’s the only annual award of its kind.

This year’s judges were Frank Viva, Monica Edinger and Marjorie Ingall. Viva has written and illustrated several acclaimed books for children, including “Along a Long Road” — a previous Times Best Illustrated winner — “Outstanding in the Rain” and “Young Frank, Architect.” He is a frequent cover artist for The New Yorker and the managing director of the design firm Viva & Co. Edinger has been an elementary- and middle-school educator for more than 25 years and currently teaches fourth grade at the Dalton School in New York City. She is also the author of the picture book “Africa Is My Home” and blogs about children’s books at Educating Alice. Ingall is a columnist for Tablet and a frequent contributor of children’s book reviews to The Times and other publications. Her book “Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children” will be published next year.

The 2015 New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books are, in alphabetical order:

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Credit From "Big Bear Little Chair"

Big Bear Little Chair

Written and illustrated by Lizi Boyd

This ingenious take on the “opposites” book shows the youngest children that big, little and tiny are all in how you look at things. Using just black, white and a velvety gray, with a bit of red, Boyd’s delightful cut paper compositions juxtapose the large and the small in unexpected ways: a “big meadow” is big because it’s full of small flowers; a “big seal” towers over a “tiny castle” that’s made of sand.

32 pp. Chronicle Books. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 3 to 5)
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Credit From "A Fine Dessert"

A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat

By Emily Jenkins. Illustrated by Sophie Blackall.

Four vignettes, set in England, South Carolina, Boston and San Diego, show how the creamy dessert called blackberry fool has been made and enjoyed over the centuries. Our reviewer, John Lithgow, called out the book’s “abundant charms.” Blackall’s warm, finely detailed illustrations — done in ink, watercolor and blackberry juice — capture the sweep of history and the constancy of family love.

32 pp. Schwartz & Wade Books. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)
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Credit From "Funny Bones"

Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras

By Duncan Tonatiuh

This biography of the Mexican artist, who popularized calaveras both as a form of political protest and a popular entertainment, integrates Posada’s own prints with Tonatiuh’s winsome, cleverly layered compositions. “Befitting its subject, the book communicates through its visual aesthetic,” Maria Russo wrote. “Tonatiuh’s eye-catching earth-toned digital collages, with occasional blasts of dusky purple or blue, feature people who look like the swoopy, postmodern descendants of Mexican folk figures.”

40 pp. Abrams. $18.95. (Picture book; ages 6 to 10)
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Credit From "Leo: A Ghost Story"

Leo: A Ghost Story

By Mac Barnett. Illustrated by Christian Robinson.

Leo, a little ghost drawn touchingly by Robinson as an improbably sweet and hopeful-looking crayoned outline, feels unwanted in the house he is haunting. So he moves to the city, where he befriends a girl who thinks he’s strictly imaginary. After Leo thwarts a robbery, his real — that is, ghostly — status is affirmed. Our reviewer, Marjorie Ingall, praised Robinson’s “exciting” art. “I love the palette of ‘Leo,’” she wrote. “Black, white, gray and various shades of moody blue, in a mix of acrylic paint and chunky construction-paper collage.”

52 pp. Chronicle Books. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 3 to 5)
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Credit From "Madame Eiffel"

Madame Eiffel: The Love Story of the Eiffel Tower

By Alice Brière-Haquet. Illustrated by Csil.

In this imaginative telling of the story behind the Eiffel Tower, the engineer Gustave Eiffel is inspired by his love for his ailing wife, Cathy. With a strict palette of black and white with dabs of light rosy red, Csil’s intricate, lacy pen-and-ink illustrations convey Eiffel’s keen attention to detail, along with the allure of Paris and the high-flying ambition of his tower. The effect is romantic and utterly charming, inviting you to look and look at the pages.

24 pp. Little Gestalten. $19.95. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)
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Credit From "The Only Child"

The Only Child

Written and illustrated by Guojing

A small child is left alone all day to fend for herself. She dozes off on a city bus and wakes in an unknown forest, a silvery fantasyland up in the clouds where she bonds with a flying deer, enormous whales and a seal pup. Our reviewer, Samantha Hunt, was enchanted by this “dreamy, wordless debut,” lovingly illustrated with smoky, mystical-looking pencil drawings. “The dark current flowing underneath such lush imagery,” Hunt wrote, “is the loneliness of childhood under China’s one-child policy.”

98 pp. Schwartz & Wade. $19.99. (Picture book; ages 5 to 9)
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Credit From "The Skunk"

The Skunk

By Mac Barnett. Illustrated by Patrick McDonnell.

A nameless narrator, wearing a tuxedo, is trailed by a mysterious skunk, even while taking a cab, attending the opera, going to a carnival and visiting a graveyard. We never learn why, though like the narrator, we come to see the skunk as more adorable than menacing. The book’s witty retro look is done in a limited palette of black and white with pale peach, gray and a little red. “The great Patrick McDonnell’s drawings are, as always, perfect down to the last scratchy line,” our reviewer, Bruce Handy, said.

32 pp. Roaring Brook Press. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)
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Credit From "Sidewalk Flowers"

Sidewalk Flowers

By JonArno Lawson. Illustrated by Sydney Smith.

“Something to treasure,” our reviewer, Carmela Ciuraru, called this dazzling wordless book. As a girl and her father walk home through city streets, she notices flowers sprouting in unexpected places. She picks them, accumulating a bouquet that she distributes to a dog, a dead bird, a homeless man and finally, back home, her sleeping toddler sibling. In Smith’s elegant and moving drawings, as Ciuraru wrote, “the only pop of color on the first page is the girl’s bright red hoodie, redolent of Peter’s snowsuit in Ezra Jack Keats’s ‘The Snowy Day.’ More color suffuses these pages as the pair gets closer to home.”

26 pp. Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press. $16.95. (Picture book; ages 3 to 8)
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Credit From "The Tiger Who Would Be King"

The Tiger Who Would Be King

By James Thurber. Illustrated by JooHee Yoon.

Thurber’s 1956 comic fable about a power-mad tiger who starts a deadly war is vibrantly illustrated by Yoon in a dense, blocky print style, all in an electric red, a cool blue-green, black and white. Each page teems with evocative images of animal life. The effect is ferocious and ravishing, capturing the beastliness of war along with emotions that include pride, boredom, shock and sorrow.

40 pp. Enchanted Lion Books. $18.95. (All ages)
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Credit From "Tricky Vic"

Tricky Vic: The Impossibly True Story of the Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower

By Greg Pizzoli

This biography of the legendary con man who once managed to sell the Eiffel Tower bursts with cheeky wit and verve. We follow Tricky Vic, as he was known, from his birth as Robert Miller in what is now the Czech Republic to his death in a federal prison in Missouri. In one of many comic touches, a thumbprint stands in for Tricky Vic’s head. “Pizzoli’s jocular, simple but graphically sophisticated collage illustrations draw readers even further into a story it would be hard to be bored by,” Maria Russo wrote.

39 pp. Viking. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 7 to 10)