Looking Back at 2025 Fiction

1/26/2026

Nancy Brashear and Carolyn Angus
As we have done for many years, we both read extensively in all subgenres—from
wordless picture books and beginning readers to graphic novels and dystopian science
fiction—and recommended to each other our “you-must-read-this” favorites throughout
the year. By December we had a lot of books to consider for inclusion on our Looking
Back at 2025 Fiction list.

Bad Badger: A Love Story. Maryrose Wood. Illus. by Giulia Ghigini. (2025). Union
Square Kids.
Septimus sometimes wonders if he even is a badger or just a bad badger because of his un-badgerish characteristics. When a gull starts visiting him each Wednesday and then abruptly stops coming around, Septimus worries that he is also bad at being a friend and sets out to locate his new friend and try to make things right. Wood’s strong
story-telling voice makes this chapter book about an unlikely friendship a good choice for reading aloud as well as for independent reading. (Gr 3-5)

Beasts. Ingvild Bjerkeland. Trans. by Rosie Hedger. (2025). Levine Querido.
Gigantic two-legged hairy beasts are decimating the population of Norway. When their mother is killed, 13-year-old Abdi escapes with his five-year-old sister, Alva. Bjerkeland gives a fast-paced account of their traumatic trek to the port of Djupvik hoping to board a ship to Fair Isle in the North Sea and reunite with their father, who is conducting
ornithological research there. Beasts ends on a hopeful but realistic note with the siblings aboard a tiny, over-crowded boat and Abdi whispering “We will be home soon. I promise.” to Alva. (translated from Norwegian) (Gr 6 Up)

Cat Nap. Brian Lies. (2025). Greenwillow.
Awakened from his nap, Kitten sees a mouse escaping into a framed poster on the wall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Does Kitten follow? Of course he does.” Lies’ artwork adds to this playful story by depicting the cat and the mouse in the style of each masterpiece they race through during the cat-and-mouse game that follows.
(information on how Lies made the art for the book and the real art from different periods in history in the museum’s collection). (PreK Up)

Elena Camps (Elena #2). Juana Medina. (2025). Candlewick.
Elena, the purple elephant Medina introduced to beginning readers in Elena Rides (2023), is confident that she can assemble her new TENT-O-MATIC all by herself. After a few entanglements and mishaps, frustrated Elena decides that it’s time to accept a little help. After reading and following the step-by-step instructions on the sheet of paper her sidekick, a little red bird, has found on the ground “TA-DA!” The tent is up and ready for Elena and her friend to sleep in. (PreK-Gr 2)

Every Monday Mabel. Jashar Awan. (2025). Simon & Schuster.
It’s Monday, Mabel’s favorite day of the week, and she doesn’t want to miss the most exciting thing of all. Waking up early, she rushes to gather her breakfast, drags her favorite chair to sit alone at the top of the driveway, and waits. “RRRRRRRRRRRRR! // Until . . . HONK HONK! It’s here!” After the garbage truck has grabbed and emptied the trash can, the truck moves on with a friendly “HONK HONK!” to continue its busy day in nearby neighborhoods where others are watching for the arrival of what Mabel knows is
the “best thing in the world.” (PreS Up)

All or Nothing, Vale. Andrea Beatriz Arango. (2025). Random House.
In this emotive verse novel, Puerto Rican seventh grader Valentina (Vale), a top fencer, faces the possibility of being permanently disabled following serious injury to her legs in a motorbike accident. After months of physical therapy, pushing through persistent pain and spurred on by Mami’s mantra, “O todo o nada,” Vale returns to her gym and confronts a new competitive fencer, Cuban American Myrka. As she develops an uneasy relationship with Myrka, Vale must grapple with the ever-present burning question in her heart: Who am I if I’m not the best fencer? (author’s note) (Gr 6-8)

Late Today. Jungyoon Huh. Trans. by Aerin Park. Illus. by Myungae Lee. (2025).
Eerdmans.
On a rainy morning, a kitten darts back and forth trying to get across a bridge in Seoul that is congested with traffic. Cars screech and honk, and the kitten mews. A driver who can no longer see the kitten pulls over and hurries out into the heavy downpour. Hearing
a mewing coming from under a car, she finds the quivering kitten. “We all were late. But it’s okay. Today was a good day to be late.” (translated from Korean) (PreK Up)

Oasis. Guojing. (2025). Godwin.
JieJie and her younger brother, Didi, struggle to survive on their own while their mother works day and night shifts in an underground factory in Oasis City, an area domed off from the rest of the barely inhabitable world. When they come upon parts of a robot in a landfill in the desert wasteland outside of the city, JieJie successfully reassembles it. After putting it in “Mother Mode,” they have an AI mom, a caregiver who will keep them safe until their mother comes home. Guojing’s softly shaded artwork sets the scene for this thought-provoking graphic novel that has a hopeful yet uncertain ending. (Gr 3 Up)

Pilgrim Codex. Vivian Mansour. Trans. by Carlos Rodriguez Cortez. Illus. by
Emmanuel Valtierra. (2025). Levine Querido.
Valtierra’s stylistic bold black-line and richly -colored artwork influenced by Mixtec codices and Mansour’s text inspired by Aztec mythology tell the evocative story,
narrated by a young boy, of the Vargas Ramírez family and friends’ trek north from their home in Mexico in search of a better life. Overcoming life-and-death hardships at each stage of their perilous journey, they arrive at their destinations as brave Migrant Warriors. Pilgrim Codex, originally published in Mexico as Códice peregrino, translates well to discussions of the plight of modern-day immigrants. (author’s note, glossary) (PreK Up)

A Place for Us. James E. Ransome. (2025). Nancy Paulsen.
This evocative wordless book opens with a young boy high-fiving a classmate at the end of the school day as his mother picks him up. Following a meal at a fast-food
restaurant, they go to the library until closing time. They find a park bench where he sleeps while his mother watches vigilantly throughout the night. The next morning, she helps him dress in clean clothes and brush his teeth at a water fountain before walking him to school where no one knows they are two of the city’s many houseless. (author’s note) (PreK-Gr 2)

Pocket Bear. Katherine Applegate. Illus. by Charles Santoso. (2025). Feiwel and
Friends.
Zephyrina (aka the Robin Hood of felines), a cat who rescues abandoned items, lives with Elizaveta and Dasha, a Ukrainian refugee mother-daughter duo who recondition and rehome toys, unsuspecting that they come alive nightly, led by Pocket, a tiny American comfort bear created for World War I soldiers. After Zephyrina drags Berwon home from a dumpster, Pocket suspects he is one of the lost first-ever soldier Teddy
Bears made in Germany. When Victoria Dankworth, a “picker,” kidnaps Berwon to auction him for a fortune, clever Zephyrina brings this poignant story to a satisfying conclusion. (author’s note) (Gr 3 Up)

Rebellion 1776. Laurie Halse Anderson. (2025). Caitlyn Dlouhy.
Following the loss of her job as a kitchen maid for a Loyalist judge during the Siege of Boston and the mysterious disappearance of her pappa, 13-year-old Elsbeth Culpepper begins working for Mr. Pike (a former Patriot spy) and his rambunctious family who moved into the judge’s home. Although slowed down by the smallpox outbreak ripping through Boston, a growing friendship with Hannah Pike and her continued search for her father keep her going as she uncovers the truth. Anderson’s strong storytelling voice brings this period of U.S. history to life for readers. (map, bibliography, sources, references) (Gr 6 Up)

Song of a Blackbird. Maria van Lieshout. (2025). First Second.
A blackbird narrates this beautifully-crafted graphic novel which intertwines two stories set in Amsterdam that come together in the epilogue. In one story set in the mid-1940s during the Nazi-occupation, teenager Emma joins the Dutch Resistance. In the other
story set in 2011, Annick investigates her family history following clues presented by five prints of buildings in the city: a theater, a school, a church, an office, and a publisher. (translated from Dutch; maps, extensive notes about the real people, places, and events that inspired the novel; bibliography) (Gr 9-12)

Sunrise on the Reaping (Hunger Games #5). Suzanne Collins. (2025). Scholastic.
Sunrise on the Reaping takes place 24 years before Collins’ dystopian series opener, The Hunger Games. Sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy is illegally “reaped” to be one of District Twelve’s four tributes to compete in the Fiftieth Hunger Games, where tributes from all the districts will fight to their deaths. Only one survivor will bring glory to their district. The original series includes three books, The Hunger Games (2008), Catching Fire (2009), and Mockingjay (2010), followed by prequels, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020) and Sunrise on the Reaping (2025). (Gr 6 Up)

The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story. Daniel Nayeri. (2025). Levine
Querido.
Thirteen-year-old Babak and eight-year-old Sana are orphaned when their father is killed during the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941. After they are taken in by different family members in Isfahan, Babak decides to flee with Sana into the Zagros Mountains hoping to find the Bakhtiari during their annual migration and be accepted as the reading teacher to the nomadic people their father once taught. (map of Iran during WW II, author’s note, further reading) (Gr 3 Up)

The Trouble with Heroes. Kate Messner. (2025). Bloomsbury.
When 13-year-old Finn Connelly is charged with vandalizing the headstone of Edna Grace Thomas, a renowned mountain climber, and faces a large fine, Edna’s daughter agrees to drop the charges if Finn climbs all 46 of the Adirondack High Peaks with Edna’s dog over the summer. He also needs to finish an incomplete assignment, a
poetry project about heroes, if he is to pass seventh grade. Messner’s verse novel, written in first person, chronicles Finn’s summer adventure in which he begins to deal with personal problems related to the death of his fireman father and what it means to be a hero. (author’s note) (Gr 6-8)

The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest. Aubrey Hartman. Illus. by Marcin Minor. (2025). Little, Brown.
Clare, the solitary undead (neither alive nor dead) fox of Deadwood Forest, is the Usher, who guides wandering souls toward the realm of the Afterlife where they will be most comfortable. When he is confronted by Gingersnape, a badger who seems unable to move on and keeps showing up at his door, Clare must deal with the probability that Gingersnapes is his replacement and it is time for him to make his way to the Afterlife. (Gr 3-5)

Vida: The Mice, the Cat and the Alebrije. Duncan Tonatiuh. (2025). Abrams.
Mousetepec was a lively town where Vida and Máximo helped their mother sell piñatas in the mercado and enjoyed spending Saturdays at the plaza where the mousefolk gathered to dance to the music of their father’s banda—until a gato began stalking the residents. It is Vida, who, after dreaming about an encounter with an alebrije, comes up with a plan to have the community create a huge, colorful, and menacing papier-mâché creature to scare the cat away. (notes on alebrijes and Vida, glossary, bibliography) (PreK Up)

The Village Beyond the Mist. Sachiko Kashiwaba. Trans. by Avery Fischer Udagawa. Illus. by Miho Satake. (2025). Yonder.
When Lina Uesugi’s father sends her to spend the summer in Misty Valley and no one is at the train station to pick her up, it is the red-dotted umbrella he gave her that unexpectedly leads her to the tiny magical village hidden in a forest (known by its few inhabitants as Absurd Avenue). Finding her way to Picotto Hall, Lina learns from the
proprietor that she will be helping out village shopkeepers in exchange for her board. (author’s note from the original 1975 Japanese edition) (Gr 3 Up)

Will’s Race for Home: A Western. Jewel Parker Rhodes. Illus. by Olga Ivanov & Aleskey Ivanov. (2025). Little, Brown.
Black 12-year-old Will and his father, a former slave who won’t speak about his childhood and strives to shelter him from danger, leave their Texas sharecrop farm on a 400-mile trek determined to claim 160 acres in the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush for their family. Forced to grow up quickly, Will conquers life-and-death situations such as saving their wagon and mule from quicksand while crossing the Red River and defending their claim against threatening white claim jumpers. (afterword). (Gr 6-8)

Nancy Brashear is Professor Emeritus of English at Azusa Pacific University, in Azusa,
California. Carolyn Angus is former Director of the George G. Stone Center for
Children’s Books, Claremont Graduate University, in Claremont, California.

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