Ladybug 2026 Shortlist

The first round of Ladybug Picture Book Award voting closed earlier this week and we are ready to move on to round 2.

Eighty-five people weighed in on the long list of nominees and we have eliminated from consideration any title that did not get at least 7 votes. This left us with a shortlist of 18 titles from which NH librarians are invited to vote for the 9 titles that they think should be nominated for the 2026 Ladybug Picture Book Award.
 
The Final Round 2026 Ladybug Nomination Survey is now open and will remain open until Sunday, 3/22/2026.

PLEASE NOTE that you can only vote once from your device (phone, computer, whatever you use to browse the web) so don't preview the survey, as you will not be able to go back again to vote.

To help make sure as many people as possible in the NH library community have an opportunity to check out these books before voting for the final nominees, we have linked each of the titles below to a video of the book being read. We did not create any of these videos; they are from a variety of sources. Where there was a version available read by the author, we chose that, otherwise we chose the best depiction of the book that we could find.
 
2026 Ladybug Picture Book Award Shortlist:

Aggie and the Ghost by Matthew Forsythe
The Bakery Dragon and the Fairy Cake by Devin Elle Kurtz
Bear and the Three Goldilocks by Patrick Horn and Dan Yaccarino
Broken by X. Fang
Cat Nap by Brian Lies
Cranky, crabby crow (saves the world) by Corey R. Tabor
The Day the Books Disappeared by Joanna Ho, Caroline Kusin Pritchard and Dan Santat
Don't Trust Fish by Neil Sharpson  and Dan Santat
The Humble Pie by Jory John and Pete Oswald 
If I Built a Town by Chris Van Dusen
If We Were Dogs by Sophie Blackall
The Man Who Didn't Like Animals by Deborah Underwood and LeUyen Pham 
Never Give a Baby a Library Card by Erin Sandberg and Tom Booth
Old Blue is My Home by Lita Judge
Pop! Goes the Nursery Rhyme by Betsy Bird and Andrea Tsurumi
Stalactite & Stalagmite: A Big Tale From a Little Cave by Drew Beckmeyer
The Wild Robot on the Island by Peter Brown
Zip Zap Wickety Wack: A Story About Sharing by Matthew Diffee

Ladybug 2025 Shortlist

The first round of Ladybug Picture Book Award voting closed earlier this week and we are ready to move on to round 2.

One hundred and eight people weighed in on the long list of nominees and we have eliminated from consideration any title that did not get at least 10% of the total votes cast. This left us with a shortlist of 16 titles from which NH librarians are invited to vote for the 9 titles that they think should be nominated for the 2025 Ladybug Picture Book Award.
 
The Final Round 2025 Ladybug Nomination Survey is now open and will remain open until Sunday, 3/23/2025.

PLEASE NOTE that you can only vote once from your device (phone, computer, whatever you use to browse the web) so don't preview the survey, as you will not be able to go back again to vote.

To help make sure as many people as possible in the NH library community have an opportunity to check out these books before voting for the final nominees, we have linked each of the titles below to a video of the book being read. We did not create any of these videos; they are from a variety of sources. Where there was a version available read by the author, we chose that, otherwise we chose the best depiction of the book that we could find.
 
2025 Ladybug Picture Book Award Shortlist 

• Ahoy! by Sophie Blackall
• The Bakery Dragon by Devin Elle Kurtz
• The Book that Almost Rhymed by Omar Abed and Hatem Aly
• Buffalo Fluffalo by Bess Kalb and Erin Kraan
• Dog vs Strawberry by Nelly Buchet and Andrea Zuill
• Flat Cat by Tara Lazar and Pete Oswald
• I am a Dragon! by Sabina Hahn
• I'm Sorry You Got Mad by Kyle Lukoff and Julie Kwon
• Lefty: A Story That Is Not All Right by Mo Willems and Dan Santat
• The Man Who Didn't Like Animals by Deborah Underwood and LeUygen Pham
• Millie Fleur's Poison Garden by Christy Mandin
• Mr. S: A First Day of School Book by Monica Arnaldo
• No Cats in the Library by Lauren Emmons
• The Teeny-weeny Unicorn by Shawn Harris
• We Are Definitely Human by X. Fang
• The Yellow Bus by Loren Long

Ladybug 2024 Shortlist

The first round of Ladybug Picture Book Award voting closed earlier this week and we are ready to move on to round 2.

We have heard from many school libraries that fitting ten nominees into the time between the start of school and the December voting deadline is often quite difficult. Based on this feedback, we are going to select 9 nominees this year which we hope will ease some of the stress of scheduling story times for each nominated book.

Ninety-three people weighed in on the long list of nominees and we have eliminated from consideration any title that did not get at least 9% of the total votes cast. This left us with a shortlist of 20 titles from which NH librarians are invited to vote for the 9 titles that they think should be nominated for the 2024 Ladybug Picture Book Award.

The Final Round 2024 Ladybug Nomination Survey is now open and will remain open until Sunday, 3/24/2024. 

PLEASE NOTE that you can only vote once from your device (phone, computer, whatever you use to browse the web) so don't preview the survey, as you will not be able to go back again to vote.

To help make sure as many people as possible in the NH library community have an opportunity to check out these books before voting for the final nominees we have linked each of the titles below to a video of the book being read. We did not create any of these videos; they are from a variety of sources. Where there was a version available read by the author we chose that, otherwise we chose the best depiction of the book that we could find. 

 

2024 Ladybug Picture Book Award Shortlist

• 100 Mighty Dragons All Named Broccoli by David LaRochelle and Lian Cho
• A is For Axolotl by Catherine Macorol and Aimee Sicuro
• Bears are Best! by Joan Holub and Laurie Keller
• Beneath by Cori Doerrfeld
• Big by Vashti Harrison
• Don't Worry Wuddles by Lita Judge
• Flat Cat by Tara Lazar and Pete Oswald
• Fluffy McWhiskers Cuteness Explosion by Stephen W. Martin and Dan Tavis
• Gibberish by Young Vo
• Hidden Gem by Linda Liu
• I am a Dragon! by Sabina Hahn
• I am a Tornado by Drew Beckmeyer
• I Eat Poop by Mark Pett
• Love in the Library by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Yas Imamura
• Mine! by Candice Fleming and Eric Rohmann
• Once Upon A Book by Grace Lin and Kate Messner
• The Mermaid with No Tail by Jessica Long and Airin O’Callaghan
• The Red Jacket by Bob Holt
• Wallflowers by MacKenzie Joy
• Wildfire! by Ashley Wolff

 

 

Great Reads from Great Places

 As part of the 2021 National Book Festival, the Center for the Book at the NH State Library selected Spindlefish and Stars by Christiane M. Andrews as a "Great Read from NH" for young readers. 

The various state centers for the book worked together to create a set of videos featuring panels of authors whose books had been selected for this project. This panel, Mystery and Magic, includes NH author Christiane M. Andrews:

The rest of the panel discussions are available at https://www.loc.gov/search/?fa=partof:great+reads+from+great+places

LAL: Online Entries

Beginning this year there is an online submission platform for Letters About Literature entries set up by the Library of Congress. The online Submittable form went live yesterday. To see what the process looks like before you begin submitting, check out this video from the Library of Congress.

We encourage everyone to use this method of entering Letters About Literature if they can, but the New Hampshire competition will accept paper entries this year. Details are on the NH LAL page.

FNV: Maxine Kumin and Wes McNair

For this month's installment of Friday Night Videos we present a poetry reading with Maxine Kumin and Wes McNair. This is from the video archive at the Library of Congress and requires Real Player (a free video player you can download).

The Library of Congress 2006 Literary Season continued with poetry readings from poets Maxine Kumin and Wesley McNair, two New England poets, who through the magic of poems, style takes the listener on a joyful ride through non-urban America.

The plan for this series is to point our readers one Friday each month to an online video featuring New Hampshire authors and their work. If you have a suggestion for a video we should include please let us know in the comments.

FNV: Eric Pinder

For the first installment of our new monthly series Friday Night Videos we present Rebecca Rule interviewing Eric Pinder on her NHPTV program NH Authors. This episode originally aired on November 4, 2013.

Eric Pinder was born in upstate New York, attended college in western Massachusetts, graduated, and some time later drove to northern New Hampshire in a rusty Chevy Nova packed with a few clothes, almost no furniture, and about a dozen boxes of books. For seven years he lived and worked as a weather observer atop Mount Washington, the “Home of the World’s Worst Weather.”

The plan for this series is to point our readers one Friday each month to an online video featuring New Hampshire authors and their work. If you have a suggestion for a video we should include please let us know in the comments.