Best Recent(ish) Picture Books

Slate has a nice article on the 25 greatest picture books from the last 25 years. It's profoundly weird that 25 years only takes us back to 2000. Before that is a nebulous period of time my son calls “the nineteen hundreds”.

There are some great picks here with so much personality. I'm hoping these will inspire me to finish my book. I really enjoy Jon Klassen's illustrations.

I wonder how much of that personality we'll lose in the coming years as this market (like many) gets flooded with AI produced knockoffs. Still, there’s something about having to take a journey with all of its messy side trips that gives the final product heart. Right? The idea of marketers using AI to gobble up an artist's style and spam it out is depressing.

Since E.B. White was an author, of course he said it best:

“With some writers, style not only reveals the spirit of the man but reveals his identity, as surely as would his fingerprints.”

Found via Kottke.org