Believe it or not, the new year is just around the corner. It’s time to celebrate the very best of 2025– including all our favorite books!  

The Good Housekeeping 2025 Kids’ Book Awards honors books that kids and their families loved reading this year– the cream of the crop, the most engaging and entertaining titles. This year, we’re delighted to have two ABFYR titles featured on Good Housekeeping’s list! Read on to learn more about our winners and more details on what make them such great reads (and perfect picks for holiday season shopping).  

Little Mouse Saves the Day by Jeff Smith (Toon)

What’s that in the closet—a robber? A monster? A CAT!? This book about overcoming fears is the highly anticipated follow-up to Eisner award-winning author Jeff Smith’s Little Mouse Gets Ready and is both a perfect read-aloud and a book that kids can begin to read on their own.

In Eisner Award-winning author Jeff Smith’s Little Mouse Gets Ready, the plucky, pint-sized hero triumphed over buttons and tail holes and the tricky problem of getting dressed. His adventures continue in Little Mouse Saves the Day, when he returns to face his biggest challenge yet: bedtime, an open closet door, and the mysterious shadow within. It could be anything…and there’s only one way to know for sure.

Good Housekeeping says: Little mouse faces the nighttime scaries in this “first comic” for brand-new readers. Easy-to-follow comic panels simultaneously provide context clues and lots of laughs as little mouse mistakes a ball and a hat for a creature in his closet. TESTER NOTE: Parents called this early reader a confidence builder. “The illustrations could almost tell the story on their own,” said one parent. “They really helped my 5-year-old not get frustrated reading the short word balloons.”

Piece Out by Alex Willan

Toy Story meets Traction Man Is Here in this picture book that offers a fresh spin on a universal premise: the secret action-adventure story of a toy.

When Red, a game piece, is accidentally left out of the game box, nothing—not a hungry robot nor the ferocious family dog Lady Flufferton—will stop them from reaching home. GH says: A survival story told from the perspective of a game board piece that wasn’t put back in the box during cleanup turned out to be an overwhelming story time win with our testers. As the piece recounts his ordeal, which included a near-deadly brush with a vacuum cleaner and a stink in the junk drawer, little listeners were rolling with laughter. TESTER NOTES: Parents also related so hard to this book. Said one mom: “Our favorite part was when the red piece landed under the couch with the other game pieces, chips, coins, and puffs!”