DrWebThe Ten Best Children’s Books of 2025 Feature a Story of Untrustworthy Fish and a Tribute to a Beloved Bus Driver – Smithsonian Magazine
A Smithsonian magazine special report
The Ten Best Children’s Books of 2025 Feature a Story of Untrustworthy Fish and a Tribute to a Beloved Bus Driver
This year’s top titles run the gamut and include an adaption of a Korean folk tale, a highly entertaining question-and-answer book and much more
By Megan Gambino – Senior Editor December 17, 2025
Smithsonian magazine’s picks for the best children’s books of 2025 include The Three-Year Tumble, Let’s Be Bees and Every Monday Mabel. Illustration by Emily LankiewiczBack when I first published this list in 2017, my two daughters were just 3 years and 7 months old. Now somehow I find myself the mom of an 11-year-old and an 8-year-old who have largely outgrown picture books. My sixth grader is deep into The Hunger Games, and my third grader eats up The Baby-Sitters Club graphic novels. But I, however, will never grow out of them.
Reading picture books is like eating dessert for every meal. From rowdy rhymes to outrageous plots to all-absorbing illustrations, they are sweet and satisfying.
The authors of my favorite children’s books published this year succeed, I’d argue, because they genuinely tap into a childlike perspective. Mike Rampton poses questions that seemingly only kids could come up with in There Are No Silly Questions. X. Fang captures the complex emotions that swirl inside tiny bodies in Broken, and Gideon Sterer demonstrates how imaginary friends can lead to real ones in If You Make a Call on a Banana Phone.
Treat yourself, and the kids in your lives, to some dessert.
There Are No Silly Questions by Mike Rampton
I’d like to meet Britain-based writer Mike Rampton. With his debut picture book, There Are No Silly Questions, the author has proved that he thinks like a kid, and that usually makes for a good time. How else would he have come up with the 200-plus truly clever queries he poses in its pages?
Apparently, Rampton’s daughter inspired the project when she asked a real stumper: Can spiders run out of web? “I realized I had absolutely no idea, but really wanted to know,” the author explains on the title page. “Hundreds of questions later, here we are!”
Rampton delivers questions that feel like they’re straight out of our kids’ mouths. Why do my fingers get wrinkly in the bath? Why do dogs spin around before going to the bathroom? How many people’s birthday is it today? And much like our very own Ask Smithsonian series, he calls on experts to help answer them—only not curators and scientists at the Smithsonian Institution, but a cadre of researchers from the University of Cambridge near his home.
The encyclopedic nature of the book—covering the human body, animals, space, music, inventions, food and more—makes it a great diversion in a car ride. Or kids can jump to a page for a few fun facts before bed.
And about those spinning dogs … it could be something to do with the Earth’s magnetic field. Seriously.
There Are No Silly Questions: More than 200 Weird and Wacky Questions, Expertly Answered!
Have you ever wondered . . . If dinosaurs sneezed? How long would it take to run around the world? If moths like light so much, why do they only come out at night?
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