The New York Times Book Review has announced its annual 10 Best Illustrated Children's Books . The annual special Children's Book section of this Sunday's Times Book Review will feature the books, which a panel of judges culled from among the several thousand children's books published this year.

The Book Review's 10 Best Illustrated Children's Books for 2009 are:

Only a Witch Can Fly , by Alison McGhee, illustrated by Taeeun Yoo (Feiwel & Friends);

Moonshot : The Flight of Apollo 11 , written and illustrated by Brian Floca (Richard Jackson/Atheneum);

The Odd Egg , written and illustrated by Emily Gravett (Simon & Schuster);

A Penguin Story , written and illustrated by Antoinette Portis (HarperCollins);

The Lion & the Mouse , illustrated by Jerry Pinkney (Little, Brown);

The Snow Day , written and illustrated by Komako Sakai (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic);

Tales from Outer Suburbia , written and illustrated by Shaun Tan (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic);

Yummy: Eight Favorite Fairy Tales , written and illustrated by Lucy Cousins (Candlewick);

White Noise , by David A. Carter (Little Simon/Simon & Schuster);

All the World , by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Marla Frazee (Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster).


The children's books editor for The New York Times Book Review is Julie Just. This year's panel of judges included Adam Gopnik, a writer for The New Yorker and the author of two novels for children; Jillian Tamaki, a teacher at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and a recipient of a Society of Illustrators gold medal; and Lisa Von Drasek, the children's librarian of the Bank Street College of Education.

The Children's Books section also contains reviews of a host of children's books. New York Times Op-Ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof reviews 14 Cows for America , by Carmen Agra Deedy with Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, illustrated by Thomas Gonzalez (Peachtree Publishers), a true story about the remote Kenyon village that offered aid to the United States after the 9/11 attacks.

Stanford Law School student and former platoon leader in Iraq, Ryan Southerland, reviews Purple Heart , by Patricia McCormick (Balzer & Bray/HarperCollins), about young American soldiers in Baghdad. And a Field Guide to Fairies roundup by author Regina Marler reviews five fairy-themed Y.A. novels and reworked fairy tales proving the resilience of an age-old genre.

Lists of the past Best Illustrated Children's Books can be found along with a slide show. This year's list will be online 6 November.


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