On Our Best Behavior: How do you whittle 13,000 books down to 54 titles?

Over the next few months, you’ll be awash in lists of books: best books, recommended books, top-10 books, notable books, and more. Creating book lists would seem to be innate to librarianship. On the one hand, it’s fun—all those debates about why a book should (or shouldn’t) be on a given list. On the other hand, it’s much needed. After all, so much is published today, with so many channels feeding us book-related information, we all need help from sources we can trust—at least to point out what we should pay attention to.

But every list of best books, whether produced by a publication or a group, has its own unique story that includes both the process of how the list was created as well as the purpose it was meant to serve. SLJ’s annual list is no exception.

Our list begins, of course, with the tremendous talent and creativity of writers and illustrators. When I look at our latest selections, what most strikes me is the sheer fearlessness of the creators, from Lucy Cousins, who took on well-known fairy tales and rendered them wonderfully fresh for a new generation of young readers, to Jacqueline Davies, who constructed an engrossing narrative around that most esoteric of topics, the first U.S. census, to novelists like Saci Lloyd who created an alternate reality as completely convincing as it is totally terrifying.

While it’s tempting to stop there, if it weren’t for publishers, it’s unlikely we would have ever seen these titles. Let’s face it; these haven’t been great years for U.S. publishers, many of whom have suffered mightily from the economic downturn. But you would never know it from the quality and diversity of many of the books we received this year.

While authors and illustrators are fearless in their imaginations, publishers are also incredible risk takers, buying and supporting books they might believe to be brilliant, yet never knowing, of course, how the market will receive them. This year’s list is especially rich in nonfiction, and what an extraordinary array of topics it includes: pre-Columbian life in the Americas, the Dust Bowl, Apollo 11, the struggle between science and religion in the Darwins’ marriage, Anne Frank, the role of children and teens in the Selma protests, the Hamilton-Burr duel, Sojourner Truth, and 3.2 million-year-old Lucy.

But what also stands out is the rich visual content and excellent design of so many of these nonfiction volumes, like the many artifacts that helped create A. J. Wood and Lint Twist’s Charles Darwin and the Beagle Adventure or the eerie and evocative sepia images in Jim Murphy’s Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting. It’s because of books like these that I think children’s and young adult publishing is the most creative and inventive sector in the industry.

Big kudos also goes to our reviewers, the first readers of these books. It’s their knowledge, acumen, and, above all, enthusiasm that help bring these books to light throughout the year. In 2009 we received more than 13,000 titles, of which 7,000 were logged into our system for possible review. We published 5,700 reviews, a record number. To our book review editors falls the unenviable task of sifting through these titles to create this list. Yes, most of these books received a star when they were first reviewed—but not always. And yes, we do want a list that’s balanced—including a good number of both picture books and young adult novels, for example—but we don’t sacrifice quality to create a more diverse list.

Now it’s your turn. Use this list to evaluate your collection. If you didn’t add these titles months ago, think again. If you own a copy, maybe you need a few more.

Reproduce the list (you have our permission). Share it with teachers and parents. Post it on your bulletin board. Pass it along. This story doesn’t end until these books have found their way into the hands they were meant for.

bkenney@reedbusiness.com