Summer is winding down: the weather has turned cooler (sob!) and students are starting the new school year. Get into the back-to-school mood with our senior superlatives for characters in the "class" of 2018–2019. What superlative would you award your favorite character?

Most musical: Bri Jackson, On the Come Up; Nira Ghani, In the Key of Nira Ghani; Charlie Noguchi, Operatic

Most artistic: Marc Chagall, Through the Window; Leonora Carrington, Out of This World; Helen Frankenthaler, Dancing Through Fields of Color

Best storyteller: Pura Belpré, Planting Stories; the girl and her cat, A Quieter Story

Best dancer: Chloe, I Wanna Be Where You Are; Vaslav Nijinsky, The Great Nijinsky; the birds, One Dark Bird

Best cook: Emoni Santiago, With the Fire on High; Omu, Thank You, Omu!; Nixie Ness, Nixie Ness: Cooking Star

Best baker: Jingwen, Pie in the Sky; Georgia Gilmore, Pies from Nowhere

Best dressed: Mary, Mary Wears What She Wants; Ogilvy, Ogilvy

Best friends: Nan and Charlie, Sweep; the kitten and the night watchman, Kitten and the Night Watchman; Harold and Hog, Harold & Hog Pretend for Real!; Thinker and Jace, Thinker; Hector and Louie, Best Friends in the Universe (but they’ve been campaigning)

Best siblings: Aidan and the new baby, When Aidan Became a Brother; Penny and the piglets, The Peculiar Pig

Related: August 2019 Horn Book Herald: Back-to-School Edition

Cutest couple: Hazel and James, Colette and Aubrey, Lovely War

Cutest meet-cute: Ben Alejo and Arthur Seuss, What If It’s Us; Zayneb Malik and Adam Chen, Love from A to Z

Most likely to make mischief: Hermes, I Am Hermes!; Styx Malone, The Season of Styx Malone; Paulie Fink, The Next Great Paulie Fink; the kid, Once upon a Goat

Most likely to be a world traveler: Bronte Mettlestone, The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone; Daisy, My Papi Has a Motorcycle; Coyote Sunrise, The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise

Most likely to be an out-of-this-world traveler: Mia, On a Sunbeam; Belka and Strelka, Dogs in Space; the child, Field Trip to the Moon

Most changed: the moth, Moth: An Evolution Story; the baby, Nine Months: Before a Baby Is Born

Most likely to succeed: the undefeated and unforgettable, The Undefeated; mother and son, Dreamers

Most likely to speak up: contributors, We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices; Laurie Halse Anderson, SHOUT; Ofelia, Cat, Lane, and Aster, Strange Birds; Barbara Jordan, What Do You Do with a Voice like That?; Tom Ed, Dodger Boy; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Faithful Spy; Jo Ann Allen Boyce, This Promise of Change; Shayla, A Good Kind of Trouble; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Dissenter on the Bench; Hector Zolile Peterson, Hector; Dani, We Set the Dark on Fire; Sophie Scholl, White Rose; Martin Luther King Jr., A Place to Land; Juan, Li, and coworkers, Undocumented

Related: Independence Day: What Makes a Good First-Day-of-School Book?

Varsity MVPs

Basketball team: Oscar Robertson, Attucks!

Baseball team: Yogi Berra, Yogi

Cricket team: Carter and Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick, Pay Attention, Carter Jones

Cycling team: Merci Suárez, Merci Suárez Changes Gears; narrator, The Patchwork Bike

Swim team: Pearl, Pearl; Yu’er, My Beijing

Track team: Lu, Lu; AJ, Running on Empty

4-H club: Sophie, Are You Ready to Hatch an Unusual Chicken?; Annie, Wild Horse Annie

Baby-sitters club: Malia, Bree, and Dot, Best Babysitters Ever; the babysitter, The Babysitter from Another Planet

For more Horn Book silliness about books we love, see the 2019 Mind the Gap Awards and previous years’ yearbook superlatives.