Best books of 1938

Chosen annually by our editors, Fanfare is The Horn Book Magazine’s selection of the best children’s and young adult books of the year.

Picture Story Books
The Forest Pool written and illustrated by Laura Adams Armer (Longmans)
The Five Chinese Brothers written by Claire Huchet Bishop, illustrated by Kurt Wiese (Coward)
Andy and the Lion written and illustrated by James Daugherty (Viking)
The Three Policemen written and illustrated by William Pène du Bois (Viking)
Mei Li written and illustrated by Thomas Handforth (Doubleday)
Hide and Go Seek written and illustrated by Dorothy P. Lathrop (Macmillan)
Yinka-Tu the Yak written by Alice Alison Lide, illustrated by Kurt Wiese (Viking)
The Cautious Carp and Other Fables in Pictures written and illustrated by Nicholas Radlov (Coward)
Buttons written by Tom Robinson, illustrated by Peggy Bacon (Viking)
The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss (Vanguard)

Stories for Younger Children
Nino written and illustrated by Valenti Angelo (Viking)
Mr. Popper’s Penguins written by Richard and Florence Atwater, illustrated by Robert Lawson (Little)
Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright (Farrar)
Sarah’s Idea written by Doris Gates, illustrated by Marjorie Torrey (Viking)
The Cottage at Bantry Bay by Hilda Van Stockum (Viking)

Folk and Fairy Tales
East of the Sun and West of the Moon written by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire, adapted from the Dasent Translation of the Collection of Asbjörnsen and Moe (Viking)
The Magic Spear and Other Stories of China’s Famous Heroes written by Louise Crane, decorations by Ching Chih Yee, illustrated by Yench ’ i Tiao T’u (Random)
Martin Pippin in the Daisy-Field written by Eleanor Farjeon, illustrated by Isobel and John Morton-Sale (Stokes)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs written and illustrated by Wanda Gág (Coward)
Tales of Poindi written by Jean Mariotti, translated by Esther Averill, illustrated by F. Rojankovsky (Domino)
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J. R. R. Tolkein (Houghton)
The Song of Roland translated by Merriam Sherwood, illustrated by Edith Emerson (Longmans)

History and Biography
Leader by Destiny, Washington, Man and Patriot written by Jeanette Eaton, illustrated by Jack Manly Rosé (Harcourt)
Seventy Stories of the Old Testament compiled by Helen Slocum Estabrook from stories selected from the King James version, illustrated with reproductions from the woodcuts of Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Hans Sebald Beham and other artists of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Bradford Press, Portland, Maine)
Windows on the World written by Kenneth Miller Gould, illustrations and charts by Omar Pancoast Goslin and Delos Blackmar (Stackpole)
Penn written by Elizabeth Janet Gray, illustrated by George Gillette Whitney (Viking)
The Young Brontës written by Mary Louise Jarden, illustrated by Helen Sewell (Viking)
Never to Die, The Egyptians in Their Own Words, selected and arranged with commentary by Josephine Mayer and Tom Prideaux, illustrated with reproductions (Viking)
Stradivari, the violin-maker, translated from the Russian of Helen Tinyanova, re-written in English by Charles Angoff, illustrated by Harrie Wood (Knopf)

Stories
Painted Saints, by Lucy Embury, illustrated by Guy Alexander (Viking)
Jerry of Seven-Mile Creek by Elmer Ferris, illustrated by Thomas Fogarty (Doubleday)
At the Sign of the Golden Compass by Eric P. Kelly, illustrated by Raymond Lufkin (Macmillan)
Shuttered Windows by Florence Crannell Means, illustrated by Armstrong Sperry (Houghton)
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea by Arthur Ransome (Macmillan)
Rifles for Washington written by Elsie Singmaster, illustrated by Frank Schoonover (Houghton)
Lion Boy, a Story of East Africa, by Alden G. Stevens, illustrated by E. A. Watson (Stokes)
The Iron Duke by John R. Tunis, illustrated by Johann Bull (Harcourt)
The Far Distant Oxus by Katherine Hull and Pamela Whitlock, illustrated by Pamela Whitlock (Cape) Without pictures (Macmillan)