Since 1952, we’ve convened a rotating annual panel of three expert judges, who consider every illustrated children’s book published that year in the United States. In 2017, we began partnering with the New York Public Library to administer the honor now called The New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books Award.

The judges select the winners purely on the basis of artistic merit. On the 2019 panel were Bruce Handy, a journalist and critic and the author of “Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult”; Jessica Cline, supervising librarian in the Picture Collection of the New York Public Library; and Jillian Tamaki, the Book Review’s By the Book illustrator and a past winner of the award. She is the author and illustrator of several graphic novels and the picture book “They Say Blue.”

Here you’ll find images from each winning book.