Best books of 1986

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
The Selkie Girl retold by Susan Cooper, illustrated by Warwick Hutton (McElderry)
Not So Fast Songololo written and illustrated by Niki Daly (McElderry)
Pigs from A to Z written and illustrated by Arthur Geisert (Houghton)
Hot Hippo written by Mwenye Hadithi, illustrated by Adrienne Kennaway (Little)
One Day in Paradise retold and illustrated by Helme Heine (McElderry)
Solomon Grundy illustrated by Susan Ramsay Hoguet (Dutton)
Flossie & the Fox written by Patricia C. McKissack, illustrated by Rachel Isadora (Dial)
Sheep in a Jeep written by Nancy Shaw, illustrated by Margot Apple (Houghton)
Brave Irene written and illustrated by William Steig (Farrar)
Who’s Counting? written and illustrated by Nancy Tafuri (Greenwillow)
The Stranger written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg (Houghton)
Max’s Christmas written and illustrated by Rosemary Wells (Dial)
Cherries and Cherry Pits written and illustrated by Vera B. Williams (Greenwillow)
Rumpelstiltskin retold and illustrated by Paul O. Zelinksy (Dutton)

Fiction
The Return of the Indian written by Lynne Reid Banks, illustrated by William Geldart (Doubleday)
Midnight Hour Encores by Bruce Brooks (Harper)
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (Greenwillow)
The Catalogue of the Universe by Margaret Mahy (McElderry)
The Miracle Tree by Christobel Mattingly (Harcourt/Gulliver)
The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O’Shea (Holiday)
A Fine White Dust by Cynthia Rylant (Bradbury)
Izzy, Willy-Nilly by Cynthia Voigt (Atheneum)

Nonfiction
The Children We Remember by Chana Byers Abells (Greenwillow)
Shapes, Shapes, Shapes written and photographed by Tana Hoban (Greenwillow)
Being Born written by Sheila Kitzinger, photographed by Lennart Nilsson (Grosset)
Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens by Patricia Lauber (Bradbury)
Consider the Lilies: Plants of the Bible written by John and Katherine Paterson, illustrated by Anne Ophelia Dowden (Crowell)
The Pilgrims of Plimoth written and illustrated by Marcia Sewall (Atheneum)

Folklore
Jump! The Adventures of Brer Rabbit adapted by Van Dyke Parks and Malcom Jones, illustrated by Barry Moser (Harcourt)

Poetry
Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young selected by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Marc Brown (Knopf)