School Library Journal 25 most influential children's books 21st Century

The 21st century has brought children’s literature more diversity and a willingness to explore difficult and complex topics. In addition, in the last five years, the publishing world—and the young readers it serves—have dealt with a global pandemic and a new, orchestrated censorship campaign seeking to remove books, particularly those that include the LGBTQIA+ community or discuss race and identity.

Through it all, children’s authors and illustrators have created titles that teach empathy, reflect the lives of the most marginalized, and share everyone’s story. They have created books that change and save lives, along with those that entertain, connect, and create lifelong readers. And we wanted to know what our readers thought were the most influential titles of the last 25 years.

This year, 2025, we seem to have been presented with lots of lists like this. I cannot imagine the enormity of this task to identify only 25 and to use the qualifier 'most influential' and this list also sets the parameter of ages 0-12. 

• Did they limit themselves to one book per author?
• This was created via readers survey - are they just readers who subscribe to SLJ
• Just US titles?
• I'd like a definition of 'influential'.

We asked for the most influential books of the last 25 years in two age categories: 0–12 and 12–18. Apologies to the many respondents who wished the question created separate lists for age groups or genres, picture books, middle grade, graphic novels, etc. But we wanted the books that stood out against all others—not just ones like them. In all, 1,638 individual titles were named for ages 0–12 and 1,657 for 12–18. We’ve pulled the top 25 for each category.

I have added Refugee by Alan Gratz and Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson to my own to read list. 

I have read or blogged many of the other 25 titles:

Wonder

The One and Only Ivan

The Wild Robot

The War that Saved my Life

Front Desk

Starfish

Out of my Mind

Ghost

Because of Winn Dixie

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

Inside out and Back again

(Amari and the Night Brothers) read but not blogged

(Smile) read but not blogged

Picture books - read but not blogged - The Day the Crayons Quit; Kitten's First Full Moon; The Book with No Pictures; Last Stop on Market Street; and Don't let the Pigeon drive the Bus.