2025 Staff Picks for Grade 3-5: Fiction
Our expert staff members have selected these excellent titles for kids.
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2025 Staff Picks: Television
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Film
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Biography and Memoir
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Historical Fiction
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Nonfiction
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Literary Fiction
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Romance
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Fantasy
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Adult Graphic Novels
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Science Fiction
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Mystery
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Suspense and Thrillers
Our expert staff members look back at the year and choose some of their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Horror
Our expert staff members look back at the year and choose some of their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Music
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite albums.
2025 Staff Picks: Teen
Our expert staff members look back at the year and choose some of their favorites.
2025 Staff Picks: Teen Graphic Novels
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks for Babies-PreK
So many great books! Here are some of this year's favorites, selected by our expert staff members.
2025 Staff Picks for Grade K-2: Picture Books
Our expert staff members have selected these picture books especially for this age group.
2025 Staff Picks for Grade K-2: Readers, Chapter Books, Graphic Novels, and Nonfiction
The list includes books for kids just learning to read, through independent readers. Also see the Staff Picks list for picture books for this age group.
2025 Staff Picks for Grade 3-5: Graphic Novels and Nonfiction
Our expert staff members have selected these books for enjoying both nonfiction and graphic novels.
2025 Staff Picks: Grade 6-8
Some of our favorite 2025 fiction and graphic novels for middle schoolers. From funny to fantasy, realistic to mystery, there's something here for everyone to love.
2025 Staff Picks: Documentaries and World Films
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Independent Films
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles.
2025 Staff Picks: Family-Friendly Movies
Our expert staff members look back at the year and share their favorite titles. Age recommendations provided by commonsensemedia.org.
Beginner's Guide to Cookbooks: Staff Picks
We have a lot of favorites--here are some cookbooks that staff highly recommend. Yum!
Embrace Nature
Whether the nature you know is outside your back door or a wilderness destination, there is endless beauty and wonder to be celebrated in the natural world. Here, Skokie librarians share some favorite books about nature and the benefits of getting outdoors.
Celebrating Jewish Voices
Explore and get inspired by Jewish biographies, culinary traditions, and memoirs.
Colleen Hoover Readalikes
Whether you have read all of Colleen Hoover's books or have one on hold, our staff has compiled a list of books that you might also enjoy.
Black Joy
This list is inspired by Kleaver Cruz's The Black Joy Project, "a digital and real-world effort to center Black joy." Cruz says, "When we acknowledge that we exist in an anti-Black world that is set up to ensure we do not live, to choose life and to choose to enjoy aspects of that life is a radical act. Centering on Black joy [doesn't] ignore the realities of our collective pain; rather, it is about holding the pain and injustices we experience as Black folks around the world in tension with the joy we experience in the pain’s midst. Black joy is healing, resistance, and regeneration."
Beginner's Guide to World Cinema: Staff Favorites
We love film from around the world! Here are some our staff favorites.
Beginner's Guide to Thrillers: Staff Favorites
To complement the "Beginner's Guide to Thrillers" blog post, staff share their favorite titles from this genre.
Beginner's Guide to Romance Books
Romance provides readers with entertainment, sexual empowerment, emotional fulfillment, lots of fun, and an emotionally satisfying happily ever after (or at least a happily for now). And in this day and age, who doesn't want that?
Beginner's Guide to Manga: Staff Favorites
We love these and think you will find something here to love, as well!
Beginner's Guide to Horror: Staff Favorites
Library staff share their favorite horror titles.