Below is our annual Top 10 Picks for 2019. This year, we’ve added an Honorable Mention list since there were SO many great books for younger readers, we simply couldn’t leave these little gems out. We hope you find this list is helpful in choosing some books to read in 2020 and look forward to sharing more great dusty jackets in the upcoming year. Happy reading!
The Dusty Jacket’s Top 10 Picks for 2019*
Adult Fiction/Biography
- Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter & Me (Memoir) by Lorilee Craker (reviewed January 2019)
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (reviewed January 2019)
- The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander (reviewed January 2019)
- Memoirs of an Invisible Friend by Matthew Dicks (reviewed February 2019)
- Chosen By a Horse (Memoir) by Susan Richards (reviewed March 2019)
- The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst (reviewed April 2019)
- The Human Comedy by William Saroyan (reviewed May 2019)
- The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein (reviewed June 2019)
- Mr. Timothy by Louis Bayard (reviewed October 2019)
- Saints at the River by Ron Rash (reviewed December 2019)
Juvenile/Young Adult
- I Don’t Know How the Story Ends (YA Historical Fiction) by J. B. Cheaney (reviewed January 2019)
- Alchemy and Meggy Swann (YA Historical Fiction) by Karen Cushman (reviewed January 2019)
- Bud, Not Buddy (J) by Christopher Paul Curtis (reviewed March 2019)
- An Elephant in the Garden (YA Historical Fiction) by Michael Morpurgo (reviewed March 2019)
- The Wheel on the School (J) by Meindert DeJong (reviewed April 2019)
- The Lightning Dreamer (YA Historical Fiction) by Margarita Engle (reviewed April 2019)
- King of the Wind (J Historical Fiction) by Marguerite Henry (reviewed May 2019)
- Return to the Willows (J) by Jacqueline Kelly (reviewed June 2019)
- The Hundred Dresses (J) by Eleanor Estes (reviewed August 2019)
- The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (J Biography) by William Kamkwamba (reviewed September 2019)
Honorable Mention
Silent to the Bone (YA) by E. L. Konigsburg (reviewed February 2019)
The Birchbark House (J) by Louise Eldrich (reviewed February 2019)
Abel’s Island (J) by William Steig (reviewed March 2019)
Bed-Knob and Broomstick (J) by Mary Norton (reviewed April 2019)
Bluefish (YA) by Pat Schmatz (reviewed July 2019)
Adam of the Road (J) by Elizabeth Janet Gray (reviewed August 2019)
*List contains selections reviewed in 2019
The Dusty Jacket 