The votes have been counted; the readers have spoken. 

Calling Caldecott’s 2025 Mock Vote Winner is {{drum roll, please}}: 

The Yellow Bus, written and illustrated by Loren Long. 

And our one Honor Book is: 

Home in a Lunchbox, written and illustrated by Cherry Mo. 

Excellent choices! Congratulations to Loren Long and Cherry Mo, and to all the Calling Caldecott voters! Thanks so much for playing along with us. 

Loren Long is a veteran picture-book illustrator with lots of NYT bestselling titles but as yet no Caldecott recognition. Home in a Lunchbox is Cherry Mo’s debut picture book. It’s interesting that these two top vote-getters come to the Caldecott field from opposite ends of the publishing experience. However, the Committee isn't supposed to factor in an illustrator’s past work or lack thereof as part of their consideration of a book.

Let’s look a bit more closely at the results. The Yellow Bus was solidly the first-place winner with 7 more first-place votes (45 total) than Home in a Lunchbox (38 votes). Using our scoring system (which mirrors the process laid out in the Caldecott manual), The Yellow Bus garnered 147 points; Home in a Lunchbox had 120 points. If there were any other books that earned close to 120 points, we might have had more than one Honor Book, but there was a very wide gap (58 points) between the second- and third-place titles. Nothing else came close to these top two. 

The Caldecott manual states: "There is a formula to determine the winner. A book must receive at least 8 first choices at four points per vote for a total of at least 32 points, and it must have an 8 point lead over the book receiving the next highest number of points." This is sort of apples and oranges — the Real Committee has fifteen members, and we had 97 participants — but the point is that to win, a book has to distance itself from the rest of the contenders. The Yellow Bus and Home in a Lunchbox both did just that. 

We should give a shout-out to the books that made a strong showing. Two Together (62 points), My Daddy Is a Cowboy (60 points), and Touch the Sky (57 points) clearly had their champions. If the numbers had played out differently, these books would have widened our mock Honor Book field. And remember, if someone on the real Committee is particularly persuasive, they might be able to sway enough of their fellow members to narrow the gap and widen the pool of Honor Books — always a good thing! (Though the manual specifically says: “There is no requirement that Honor Books be named.”) 

Finally, please remember that these results have absolutely no bearing on what the Real Committee decides. This mock vote is a lot of fun, but the work of selecting the winner of the 2025 Caldecott Medal and any Honor Books will really start this weekend in Phoenix. We know all readers of this blog will be tuning into the livestream YMA announcements on Monday at 8 a.m. MT — unless you’re lucky enough to be in the LibLearnX room where it happens. 

Again, thank you to everyone who participated in this mock vote. We will be back on Friday to tie-up some loose ends, and we’ll “see” you again on Monday after the announcements with our reactions and analysis — at this point, the field is still wide open and anything can happen! Our sincere best wishes to the Committee as they approach the culmination of a year's worth of work!