Books make the best gifts, but finding the perfect book for the reader on your list isn’t always easy! We’ve compiled our picks for readers of all kinds, including books to satisfy the teen who devours graphic novels, picture books for elementary-aged animal lovers, novels for action and adventure fans, and more! Check out our recommendations below highlighting new releases and old favorites you might have missed.
For Manga, Comics, and Graphic Novel Fans
Graphic novels and comics are popular for a reason! Here are some of our favorites.

Glorious Wrestling Alliance: Ultimate Championship Edition
(Grades 9-12)
Step into the ring at Glorious Wrestling Alliance, the universe’s least-professional wrestling company. The Great Carp, an amphibious wonder, is feeling the weight of his championship. Miranda Fury has donned a mask to smash wrestling’s glass ceiling. And Gravy Train is desperate for a new gimmick, but it’s hard when you’re shaped like a giant gravy boat.
Collected in colossal full color for the first time, Josh Hicks’s cult-hit comic covers identity, anxiety, and leg drops. In this hilarious love letter to the surreal theater of pro wrestling, the insecure grapplers of GWA lock up, throw things, throw each other, and occasionally curl up into little balls.

Artie and the Wolf Moon
(Grades 7-9)
After sneaking out against her mother’s wishes, Artie Irvin spots a massive wolf—then watches it don a bathrobe and transform into her mom. Thrilled to discover she comes from a line of werewolves, Artie asks her mom to share everything—including the story of Artie’s late father. Her mom reluctantly agrees. And to help Artie figure out her own wolflike abilities, her mom recruits some old family friends.
Artie thrives in her new community and even develops a crush on her new friend Maya. But as she learns the history of werewolves and her own parents’ past, she’ll find that wolves aren’t the scariest thing in the woods—vampires are.
More Like This:
The Wolf in Underpants (Grades 2-5)
A House Divided (Grades 7-12)
Ever After (Grades 9-12)
For the Reader Who Can’t Get Enough of the MCU
Fans of superheroes, aliens, espionage, and blockbuster adventures will love these action-packed stories.

Super Potato Gets Buff
(Grades 2-5)
Gigantic flies are on a rampage at the Cortex research center, thanks to a beam that boosted their molecules! Fortunately, the technology behind the giant flies also leads to a gigantic Super Potato . . . who’s delighted with his new muscles.

Eighth Grade vs. the Machines
(Grades 4-7)
After the entire population of Earth’s solar system is whisked away by alien technology, Jack and his classmates and teachers aboard the PSS 118 are the only humans left. It’s up to them to find and rescue the rest of humanity—if they can avoid the aliens hunting them down, steer clear of a robot civil war, and figure out who among them might be a traitor.
More Like This:
The Spy Who Raised Me (Grades 8-12)
The Secret Life of Kitty Granger (Grades 6-12)
For Young Activists and Future Leaders
Explore books that inform readers about issues in the world and inspire them to take action.

Come Together, Change the World: A Sesame Street® Guide to Standing Up for Racial Justice
(Grades PreK-2)
What can you do to stand up for racial kindness?
Elmo and friends learn along with young readers about racial justice. Inspired by CNN and Sesame Street’s Town Hall, Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism, this gentle guide helps kids celebrate what makes them special, use words to talk about race, and understand why it is important to treat everyone fairly.

Know Your Rights and Claim Them: A Guide for Youth
(Grades 6-12)
“This book is a guide for every young person who believes in a better world for all”—Malala Yousafzai
Adults are aware of their universal human rights of freedom and equality, but children often are ignorant of the rights they possess before reaching the age of majority. Enter Know Your Rights and Claim Them, written in partnership with Amnesty International, Angelina Jolie, and Geraldine Van Bueren.
Know Your Rights and Claim Them details the rights promised in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, starting with the history of child rights, and providing a clear description of the types of child rights, the young activists from around the world who fought to defend them, and how readers can stand up for their own rights.
More Like This:
Issues in Action (Read Woke™ Books) (Grades 4-8)
The Fight for Black Rights (Alternator Books®) (Grades 3-6)
Picture Books for Creative Kids
Know an aspiring writer or artist, or kids who love crafting? Check out fun picture books that speak to the creative in everyone!

Monkey with a Tool Belt and the Craftiest Christmas Ever!
(Grades PreK-2)
Chico Bon Bon’s epic Christmas party is three days away! Is our intrepid monkey ready? Of course not!
But thanks to his trusty tool belt and plenty of ingenuity, Chico helps his friends decorate, turns a pile of junk into a bundle of gifts, and finishes preparing for the party just in the nick of time. WHEW!
The latest installment from author and illustrator Chris Monroe is packed full of fun, friendship, and holiday cheer!

How to Make a Book (about My Dog)
(Grades 1-4)
How do you make a picture book? Well, you need an author, an illustrator, and . . . a dog?!
Acclaimed author Chris Barton and his trusty pooch Ernie show readers how to make a nonfiction picture book . . . about Ernie! From coming up with ideas, researching, and writing a first draft to finding the perfect illustrator, deciding what goes on the cover, and getting every last wrod—er, word—just right, you’ll see how a book is made from beginning to end.
For Animal, Pet, and Nature Lovers
From dogs to elephants and even rats, these books feature creatures that readers will love to learn about.

Animals to the Rescue!: Amazing True Stories from around the World
(Grades 4-6)
Did you know that rats can be heroes? In the southern African nation of Mozambique, these amazing rats (which are the size of a small house cat) have helped clear landmines. And that’s just one of the incredible stories in this book.
Award-winning author Sandra Markle has collected wonderful true stories about animals that have rescued humans—and other animals. With fabulous photographs of the featured animals, this book is sure to appeal to animal lovers everywhere!

A Dog’s Best Friend: A Sesame Street® Guide to Caring for Your Dog
(Grades PreK-2)
Celebrate all there is to love about getting a new dog with Sesame Street!
Learn how to get ready for your furry friend, including how to take care of and play with your new friend, and how to help shelter animals, whether or not you can have a dog as a pet.
More Like This:
Tracking Tortoises: The Mission to Save a Galápagos Giant (Grades 4-8)
American Jaguar: Big Cats, Biogeography, and Human Borders (Grades 8-12)
Night Creatures: Animals That Swoop, Crawl, and Creep while You Sleep (Grades K-4)
For Fans of Realistic Fiction
Nothing magic or supernatural here—just incredible novels about characters facing issues that middle-grade and YA readers can relate to.

Just Ash
(Grades 8-12)
Ashley “Ash” Bishop has always known who he is: a guy who loves soccer, has a crush on his friend Michelle, and is fascinated by the gruesome history of his hometown—Salem, Massachusetts. He’s also always known that he’s intersex, born with both male and female genitalia. But it’s never felt like a big deal until his junior year of high school, when Ash gets his first period in front of the entire boys’ soccer team. Now his friends and teachers see him differently, and his own mother thinks he should “try being a girl.”
As tensions mount with his parents and Ash feels more and more like an outcast, he can’t help feeling a deeper kinship with his ancestor Bridget Bishop, who was executed for witchcraft. She didn’t conform to her community’s expectations either; she was different, and her neighbors felt threatened by her. And she paid the ultimate price. Ash is haunted by her last recorded words: You will keep silent.
Ash realizes that he needs to find a way to stand up for who he really is, or the cost of his silence might destroy his life, too.

Where I Belong
(Grades 6-12)
An immigrant teen fights for her family, her future, and the place she calls home.
In the spring of 2018, Guatemalan American high school senior Milagros “Millie” Vargas knows her life is about to change. She’s lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, ever since her parents sought asylum there when she was a baby. Now a citizen, Millie devotes herself to school and caring for her younger siblings while her mom works as a housekeeper for the wealthy Wheeler family. With college on the horizon, Millie is torn between attending her dream school and staying close to home, where she knows she’s needed. She’s disturbed by what’s happening to asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border, but she doesn’t see herself as an activist or a change-maker. She’s just trying to take care of her own family.
Then Mr. Wheeler, a U.S. Senate candidate, mentions Millie’s achievements in a campaign speech about “deserving” immigrants. It doesn’t take long for people to identify Millie’s family and place them at the center of a statewide immigration debate. Faced with journalists, trolls, anonymous threats, and the Wheelers’ good intentions—especially those of Mr. Wheeler’s son, Charlie—Millie must confront the complexity of her past, the uncertainty of her future, and her place in the country that she believed was home.

Eddie Whatever
(Grades 5-8)
Thirteen-year-old Eddie needs to do a community service project in preparation for his bar mitzvah. Against his better judgment, he ends up with a volunteering gig at Silver Brook Pavilion retirement home, where the residents call him “Eddie Whatever” rather than worry about remembering his last name. These old folks soon upend all Eddie’s assumptions about the boringness of the elderly. There’s a dramatic courtship unfolding, long-hidden secret identities, a rumor of a vengeful ghost, and a thief on the loose.
When suspicion falls on Eddie, he teams up with his fellow volunteer (and crush), Tessa, to solve the mysteries of Silver Brook.

AfterMath
(Grades 5-8)
After her brother’s death from a congenital heart defect, twelve-year-old Lucy is not prepared to be the new kid at school—especially in a grade full of survivors of a shooting that happened four years ago. Without the shared past that both unites and divides her classmates, Lucy feels isolated and unable to share her family’s own loss, which is profoundly different from the trauma of her peers.
Lucy clings to her love of math, which provides the absolute answers she craves. But through budding friendships and an after-school mime class, Lucy discovers that while grief can take many shapes and sadness may feel infinite, love is just as powerful.
More Like This:
Name Tags and Other Sixth-Grade Disasters (Grades 4-7)
How to Live on the Edge (Grades 8-12)