The 2024 NYT/NYPL Best Illustrated list came out yesterday! Here are the titles selected: 

The Cat Way, written and illustrated by Sara Lundberg, translated by B.J. Woodstein

Animal Albums From A to Z, written and illustrated by Cece Bell

Planting Hope: A Portrait of Photographer Sebastião Salgado, written by Philip Hoelzel, illustrated by Renato Alarcão

Yaya and the Sea, written by Karen Good Marable, illustrated by Tonya Engel

The Man Who Didn’t Like Animals, written by Deborah Underwood, illustrated by LeUyen Pham

Up, Up, Ever Up! Junko Tabei: A Life in the Mountains, written by Anita Yasuda, illustrated by Yuko Shimizu

Here & There, written and illustrated by Thea Lu

As Edward Imagined: A Story of Edward Gorey in Three Acts, written by Matthew Burgess, illustrated by Marc Majewski

Little Shrew, written and illustrated by Akiko Miyakoshi

There’s a Ghost in the Garden, written by Kyo Maclear, illustrated by Katty Maurey

I can't argue against a one of them; gorgeous books all. Congratulations!

There are two illustrators among the ten who are previous Caldecott Honor recipients. LeUyen Pham received an Honor in 2020 for Bear Came Along, written by Richard T. Morris, as did Yuko Shimizu in 2021 for The Cat Man of Aleppo, written by Irene Latham & Karim Shamsi-Basha. Both artists still reside in the U.S., so Up, Up, Ever Up! Junko Tabei and The Man Who Didn't Like Animals are in the running this year. (The author of Up, Up, Ever Up! is Canadian, but an author's residence/citizenship status doesn't matter to the Committee.) Cece Bell and Tonya Engel also live in the U.S., so Animal Albums From A to Z and Yaya and the Sea are also eligible. We didn't include any of these books on our list and will definitely try to rectify that in the next two months. 

Three of the titles have two Caldecott strikes against them. These titles have been previously published and the illustrators don't live in the U.S.: The Cat Way (previously published in Sweden); Little Shrew (previously published in Japan); Here & There seems to have been previously published, but Thea Lu doesn't live in the U.S., so that's that.

The remaining three books aren't eligible because their illustrators do not live in the U.S.: Planting Hope (Renato Alarcão), As Edward Imagined (Marc Majewski), and There’s a Ghost in the Garden (Katty Maurey).

What did you think about the NYT/NYPL's choices?