Best books of 1976

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 Books
Six Little Ducks retold and illustrated by Chris Conover (Crowell)
Wild Robin retold and illustrated by Susan Jeffers (Dutton)
A Northern Nativity written and illustrated by William Kurelek (Tundra/Scribner)
Frog and Toad All Year written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel (Harper)
Mr. and Mrs. Pig’s Evening Out written and illustrated by Mary Rayner (Atheneum)
The Amazing Bone written and illustrated by William Steig
Hush, Little Baby retold and illustrated by Margot Zemach (Dutton)

Stories
A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond (Atheneum/Margaret K. McElderry)
The Winter of the Birds by Helen Cresswell (Macmillan)
The Blue Hawk by Peter Dickinson (Atlantic-Little)
Arilla Sun Down by Virginia Hamilton (Greenwillow)
Very Far Away from Anywhere Else by Ursula Le Guin (Atheneum)
A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively (Dutton)
Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey (Atheneum)
A Year and a Day by William Mayne (Dutton)
The Master Puppeteer written by Katherine Paterson, illustrated by Haru Wells (Crowell)
The Team written and illustrated by K. M. Peyton (Crowell)
Freelon Starbird by Richard Snow (Houghton)
Abel’s Island written and illustrated by William Steig (Farrar)
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor (Dial)
Noah’s Castle by John Rowe Townsend (Lippincott)
Unleaving by Jill Paton Walsh (Farrar)
The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall (Greenwillow)

Books
Books: From Writer to Reader by Howard Greenfeld, illustrated with photographs (Crown)

Cities
Underground written and illustrated by David Macaulay (Houghton)

People and Places
Never to Forget: The Jews of the Holocaust by Milton Meltzer (Harper)
Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions written by Margaret Musgrove, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon (Dial)
Voyaging to Cathay: Americans in the China Trade by Alfred Tamarin and Shirley Glubok, illustrated with photographs and reproductions (Viking)

Of Interest to Adults
American Picturebooks from Noah’s Ark to the Beast Within by Barbara Bader, illustrated with reproductions (Macmillan)
Talent Is Not Enough: Mollie Hunter on Writing for Children by Mollie Hunter (Harper)