Readers are beholden to the many writers and illustrators who continue to play catch-up with United States history, filling in huge gaps with books such as That Flag by Tameka Fryer Brown, illustrated by Nikkolas Smith, or Olaudah Equiano's story of his life as a slave, as told in Nearer My Freedom by Monica...

This was the year when one picture book creator after another gave us a glimpse of the neighborhood that informed the writer or illustrator within, including Raúl the Third’s exuberant ¡Vamos! Let’s Go Read, in which an entire Mexican American community celebrates books and literacy with bilingual abandon, and Margarita Engle’s Water Day, where...