Welcome to The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
We are one of the nation’s leading children’s book review journals for school and public librarians. We provide concise summaries and critical evaluations to help you find the books you need for your library’s collection.
July’s Big Picture
The success of a story can, ironically, often come down to a stellar villain—it’s the bad guys whom readers often find themselves remembering years later, the diabolical ones who drive the emotion of a story with a sort of fierce brutality. In month’s Big Picture, Empty Heaven, author Freddie Kölsch presents just such an entity, a malevolent force built on a beautiful but terrible lie. Following up the ghastly, persistent, and entirely unforgettable Mr. Nous in Kölsch’s first novel Now, Conjurers (BCCB 7/24), this second outing is equally diabolical, and it asks the reader to consider whether they’d be able to stand up to a merciless evil rooted in searing truth about humanity.
CCB Summer Reads
Need to recommend summer reads? We’ve got you covered! Check out our curated, annotated list of titles from 2024-2025 issues of The Bulletin. Organized by age group, the list includes picture books, middle grade, and young adult. Created by Glo Roberts & Bella Muniz.
2024 Blue Ribbons 
Our best books of the year for 2024 is available now! Journeys, both literal and figurative, thread through this year’s Blue Ribbon list, so the staff here at the Bulletin invites readers to take a literary excursion with the books we’ve named the best of 2024. From the haunted backwoods of Kentucky to the streets of Harlem, from magical realms to the high seas of a living room rug, the list is a wild and deeply satisfying ride—we wish you safe travels and happy reading!
The Center for Children’s Books
The Bulletin is partnered with the Center for Children’s Books, a research center whose mission is to facilitate the creation and dissemination of exemplary and progressive research and scholarship related to youth-focused resources, literature, and librarianship.
Cover illustration from Empty Heaven © 2025 Tess Hamilton. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Union Square & Co.
