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The Best Picture Book

Last updated on August 12, 2019

We looked at the top 6 Picture Books and dug through the reviews from 41 of the most popular review sites including and more. The result is a ranking of the best Picture Books.

Best Picture Book

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Our Picks For The Top Picture Books

Show Contents
Our Take
Experts Included
Pros
Cons
  The Best Overall
  The Best Value

Drew Daywalt The Day the Crayons Quit

Don't Waste Your Money Seal of Approval

Drew Daywalt

The Day the Crayons Quit

Overall Take

Take your child’s imagination to the next level with the super fun picture book, "The Day the Crayons Quit" by Drew Daywalt. This story will enhance your listeners' exploration of colors in a fashion that no one else has devised. Even adults will enjoy reading this children's picture book.

Experts Included
DWYM Entertainment Experts plus Good Reads, Common Sense Media, Kid’s Book Review, Book Page, Kirkus Reviews, Looking Glass Review and 6 more. Along with user reviews from Amazon and Walmart.
Pros
" The Day the Crayons Quit is wildly imaginative and loads of fun. It has a youthful sensibility that kids will relate to, but it's so clever that adults won't mind reading it over and over again."
Cons
"The volume of text may make this a little challenging for younger readers to tackle alone."

Adam Rubin Dragons Love Tacos

Adam Rubin

Dragons Love Tacos

Overall Take

"Dragons Love Tacos" by Adam Rubin comes packed with stunning illustrations and playful words that roll off the tongue and into the listener’s imagination. The expressive display of the dragon as the pages turn also keep your onlookers hooked. This picture book makes a fun accompaniment to your kid's bedtime. Read More

Experts Included
DWYM Entertainment Experts plus Good Reads, Common Sense Media, The Children’s Book Review, Wired, Brightstar Bedtime Stories, Kirkus Reviews and 3 more. Along with user reviews from Amazon.
Pros
" DRAGONS LOVE TACOS is delightful, silly fun from start to finish."
Cons
"A wandering effort, happy but pointless."

Adir Levy What Should Danny Do?

Adir Levy

What Should Danny Do?

Overall Take

Experts Included
DWYM Entertainment Experts plus Good Reads, Books That Heal Kids, What Should Danny Do, Good Books For Catholic Kids. Along with user reviews from Amazon.
Pros
" A line that is emphasized in the book is "THE POWER TO CHOOSE.' I love this so much. Although kids are going to make mistakes in their thought processes I like reinforcing the idea of helping children remember to take..."

Mo Willems Waiting Is Not Easy!

Mo Willems

Waiting Is Not Easy!

Overall Take

Experts Included
DWYM Entertainment Experts plus Common Sense Media, Good Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Redeemed Reader, Children’s Atheneum. Along with user reviews from Amazon.
Pros
" Still, it's a humorous lesson for kids often frustrated by waiting and what kinds of rewards waiting can bring."
Don't just take for granted what one reviewer says. Along with our own experts, DWYM analyzes the top expert reviews of the leading products and generates a score you can actually trust.
13

Products Considered

We identified the majority of the picture books available to purchase.
6

Products Analyzed

We then selected the leading and most popular products for our team to review.

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41

Expert Reviews Included

In addition to our expert reviews, we also incorporate feedback and analysis of some of the most respected sources including: Good Reads, Books That Heal Kids, What Should Danny Do, Good Books For Catholic Kids, The Plot Bunny.

19,134

User Opinions Analyzed

We also incorporate user reviews from the leading retailers including

Our experts reviewed the top 6 Picture Books and also dug through the reviews from 41 of the most popular review sites including and more. The result is a ranking of the best of the best Picture Books.

DWYM is your trusted roduct review source. Our team reviews thousands of product reviews from the trusted top experts and combines them into one easy-to-understand score. Learn more.

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Look for the DWYM seal for products that are the best in their category.

The Best Overall

Drew Daywalt The Day the Crayons Quit


Our Expert Score

8.9
12 expert reviews

User Summarized Score

9.6
3,934 user reviews

Our Take

Take your child’s imagination to the next level with the super fun picture book, "The Day the Crayons Quit" by Drew Daywalt. This story will enhance your listeners' exploration of colors in a fashion that no one else has devised. Even adults will enjoy reading this children's picture book.

What other experts liked

The Day the Crayons Quit is wildly imaginative and loads of fun. It has a youthful sensibility that kids will relate to, but it's so clever that adults won't mind reading it over and over again.
- Common Sense Media
The Day the Crayons Quit is a clever, creative and colourful exploration of, well, colour.
- Kid's Book Review
July 14, 2013 | Full review
There’s a lot of humor in Oliver Jeffers’ relaxed, naïf illustrations, made to look like a child’s artwork: a pink monster; Santa Claus on a red fire truck (Red Crayon is tired of working, even on holidays!); and the triumphant,...
- Book Page
Jeffers delivers energetic and playful illustrations, done in pencil, paint and crayon. The drawings are loose and lively, and with few lines, he makes his characters effectively emote.
- Kirkus Reviews
Readers of all ages are going to enjoy this enormously amusing picture book. Everyone has, at some point, used crayons to draw and write. There is something comforting about their colors, their texture, even their wonderful crayony smell.
- Looking Glass Review
The Day The Crayons Quit comes equipped with a very beautiful, and relevant, series of themes that might help to facilitate a dialogue between parents and their children as they read along together.
- Pop Goes The Reader
December 10, 2013 | Full review
The illustrations allow the adult reader to become a child again, while the letters from the crayons are inspired! Children will love these humorous missives and the antics of the crayons that wrote them!
- Children's Writer's Guild
Using a clean combination of photographed ephemera and crayon drawings, Jeffers and Daywalt make the reader conscious of the emotive role of colour and acknowledge that children’s art-making isn’t always purely spontaneous.
- Look Book Report
Each letter that the crayons sketch is written in their color and in a different handwriting. This helps give each crayon its own personality, but also communicate that all of them can be equal without being the same. With each...
- Children's Literature at UMN
April 2, 2018 | Full review
This sumptuous book is a real work of art: each beautifully-designed spread features an entertaining handwritten letter from one of the crayons, accompanied with delightfully scribbly illustrations from Jeffers.
- Book Trust

What other experts didn't like

The volume of text may make this a little challenging for younger readers to tackle alone.
- Book Trust

Overall Product Rankings

1. Drew Daywalt The Day the Crayons Quit

Overall Score: 9.4
Reviews Included: 14

2. Adam Rubin Dragons Love Tacos

Overall Score: 9.3
Reviews Included: 11

3. Adir Levy What Should Danny Do?

Overall Score: 9.2
Reviews Included: 6

4. Mo Willems Waiting Is Not Easy!

Overall Score: 9.2
Reviews Included: 7

6. Ashley Spires The Most Magnificent Thing

Overall Score: 8.5
Reviews Included: 11

Our Picture Book Buying Guide

There is nothing like enjoying the fascination of a child when you read to them from a picture book. Whether you cozy up under a blanket on a couch or read by a flashlight in a tent, your audience is sure to find joy in reading their favorite picture book over and over again. Picture books are a great combination of beautiful art (art is in the eye of the beholder) and compelling prose. There are only a few things that a good picture book needs, and you will certainly know when you’ve found a good one!

As a reader and true appreciator of a picture book, you’ll automatically find several things that make you love a picture book. First is the story. There is nothing better than a good story, and if it is good, it will certainly stick in your mind and keep you wanting to read the same book time after time. Kids often hold on to stories that are relatable — like “Goodnight Moon,” which is a story of something they can easily identify in the sky when they say goodnight.  On the other hand, picture books for young adults or teens might have a story of things that are out of this world and magical, such as “Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone: Illustrated Edition.”

Next, readers and onlookers alike will find that when the words and the art perfectly complement each other, the picture book will be a winner. In “The Day the Crayons Quit” by Drew Daywalt, you’ll find a kid-friendly storyline with child-like drawings for the pictures. This children’s book masters the playful give and take of the words with the pictures.

Lastly, the best picture books will yield that encore shouting from your little ones when you get to the end. That yearning for a reread is a surefire sign of a fantastic picture book. You will find that in “Giraffes Can’t Dance” by Giles Andreae and “Dragons Love Tacos” by Adam Rubin.

Find that fun reading time with your kiddos when you pull these awesome picture books off the bookshelf and snuggle in for some quality time with them.

DWYM Fun Fact

The first children’s book with illustrations was “Orbis Sensualium Pictus” or “The World of Things Obvious to the Senses Drawn in Pictures.” It was written in 1658 by John Comenius, a Czech native. He wrote it in Latin, but with excellent drawings throughout of the most common things known to man, from animals to insects, scenery and even breathe from a man’s mouth. It was quite popular and became implemented in some schools as well.

Although it was popular then, most homes do not contain a copy of this book for their children. Research from 2001 shows that “The Poky Little Puppy” by Janette Sebring Lowrey was the number one selling picture book in history with over 14,800,000 copies sold (at that point). This book was atop a list with books by multiple famous authors such as Dr. Seuss, J.K. Rowling and Beatrix Potter.

The Picture Book Tips and Advice

  • One thing to keep in mind when buying a good picture book is your audience. Do your kids like a specific topic such as animals, vehicles or insects? And always keep their age in mind as you look for a good picture book.
  • Read the book summary before buying it to give you an idea of the story, and flip through the pages to check out the art.
  • Look for reviews from other readers.
  • Use your best resources: family and friends’ suggestions.
  • Make a visit to your local library and ask a librarian for suggestions. If your kiddo loves a book you read from the library, you can buy it to add to your child’s personal library.
  • Interactive picture books are a fantastic way to get children to love picture books. Even if the book doesn’t have flaps or touch-and-feel features, you can make a book interactive by asking the child to find a hidden object or dance like the characters in the book. Make it fun for them so they want to read the book again.

About The Author

Genevieve Nino 

Genevieve Nino a professional writer located in the Topsail Island area of North Carolina. Her writing career started in 2014 as a travel writer. Since then, she has written in multiple niches including business reviews, parenting, hospitality and weddings. A few of the sites she has written for include Wedding Wire, The Knot, Go Banking Rates and Reservation Counter, just to name a few.