Best Youth Books (Awarded) [Top 10 Recommended] [2024 Update]

What are the best, award-winning children’s books? In this overview, you will find our best recommendations of good, fun, exciting, and/or inspiring national and international youth books of all time. Here you will find both classics and more recent recommendations for the youth. Read along…

Best youth books ever

We start our recommendations with the top 10 best books for Youth of all time. This list has been updated this year, including all the recent titles.

Best Youth Books	Author
Speak	Laurie Halse Anderson
The House on Mango Street	Sandra Cisneros
The Perks of Being a Wallflower	Stephen Chbosky
The Book Thief	Markus Zusak
To Kill a Mockingbird	Harper Lee
Lord of the Flies	William Golding
The Fault in Our Stars	John Green
The Catcher in the Rye	J. D. Salinger
The Outsiders	S. E. Hinton
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children	Ransom Riggs

The updated top 10 list: the best books for youth

A Butterfly Is Patient: (Nature Books for Kids, Children’s Books Ages 3-5, Award Winning Children’s Books)

If your child loves to watch insects, then this is the perfect book to develop their interest in butterflies. It teaches them about different butterflies and what they look like.

A Nest Is Noisy

This is a book in the same series as the previous one on our list, but this time your child will learn everything about nests. It’s not just about birds with nests, but, for example, also about orangutans with their nest in the top of the rainforest.

The Big Snow and Other Stories: A Treasury of Caldecott Award-Winning Tales (Dover Children’s Classics)

We like this book, because it has been around for many years, and it is still a favorite with many children today. ‘The Big Snow’ focuses on both the drawings and the stories itself, with the emphasis on wildlife.

Oliver West! It’s Time to Get Dressed! (Award Winning Book)

We find this book a really fun one for children, because it tells them about what you need to do first before you can go outside and play.

Positive Ninja: A Children’s Book About Mindfulness and Managing Negative Emotions and Feelings (Ninja Life Hacks)

Not every child feels happy, and when they are not, this book can help them feel better. The book, in a funny way, teaches children about mindfulness and optimism.

Seeds and Trees: A children’s book about the power of words

If you find that parenting can be hard sometimes, ‘Seeds and Trees’ teaches you and your child to be positive, and to love and care for each other. The book achieves this by presenting a prince who plants seeds, but then ends up moving some of the trees that grow from them, because they seem to hurt the other ones.

Watch Ya’ Mouth Ultimate Edition

This is not a book, but we find it an extremely funny game for both children and adults. You will receive a mouth guard and while wearing it, you must tell what is on your card. The other ones must figure out what you are saying.

All the World (Classic Board Books)

We recommend ‘All the World’ because of its simplicity. It shares a day in the lives of a family and friends, but what strikes us most, is that every element of that day, however big or small, is as relevant as all the other parts of their day.

Grumpy Monkey

There is nothing wrong with you if you don’t feel happy every day. Jim, the grumpy chimpanzee in this book, will be able to explain that to children, although the life lesson in this book could also be interesting for many adults.

Giraffes Can’t Dance

Gerald the giraffe wants to dance, but finds this extremely difficult with the type of body he has. The pictures and text show kids that you should never stop dreaming, just because someone tells you you can’t do something.