Another tremendous year of reading! A year in which middle grade fiction, with its incredible and nuanced tales and characters, really floored me. Bravo! Thank you to all of the authors for bringing such wonderful stories to us readers.

In no particular order, I present my picks for best of children’s fiction- including middle grade lit and graphic novels- of 2016:

A Boy Named Queen by Sara Cassidy
Once Was a Time by Leila Sales
Kabungo by Rolli
It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas
A Blind Guide to Stinkville by Beth Vrabel

Booked by Kwame Alexander
The Best Man by Richard Peck
The Summer We Saved the Bees by Robin Stevenson
Mayday by Karen Harrington
Avenging the Owl by Melissa Hart

The Book You’re Not Supposed to Have (Timmy Failure #5) by Stephan Pastis
Double Down (Diary of A Wimpy Kid #11) by Jeff Kinney
Royal Wedding Disaster (From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess #2) by Meg Cabot
The Strange Gift of Gwendolyn Golden & Everton Miles Is Stranger Than Me (Night Flyers series) by Philippa Dowding

Gertie’s Leap to Greatness by Kate Beasley
Where You’ll Find Me by Natasha Friend
The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
The Seventh Most Important Thing by Shelley Pearsall
Completely Cassidy series by Tamsyn Murray

The Ministry of Ghosts by Alex Shearer
Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo
The Land of Forgotten Girls by Erin Entrada Kelly
Apple and Rain by Sarah Crossan
An Island of Our Own by Sally Nichols

Children’s graphic novels and early fiction formats:

Bera the One-Headed Troll by Eric Orchard
Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea by Ben Clanton
Fluffy Strikes Back by Ashley Spires
Lucy by Randy Cecil

Note: Some titles appearing on this list may have been published in previous years; titles on this list are ones that I read in 2016. Some titles appearing on this list may also have been provided by publishers in exchange for honest reviews; this has no bearing on making this list. These are my personal selections.