The December 2023 Picture Books Spotlight is all done for the entire month! This is because December is always a terrible month for new book releases. I honestly don’t really know why that might be, but it’s been that way as long as I’ve done these Spotlights (since May 2016).
So, as I normally do for December, I have put together a small Spotlight for each grade level group for the entire month.
For this Picture Book Spotlight, we’ve got only 5 books that meet my criteria for the entire month. That means this is the last Picture Book Spotlight for 2023!
To make up for a smaller Spotlight, I am currently working on a Caldecott 2024 predictions list for next Tuesday.
As usual, the December Spotlight has five parts. I’ve linked the first three below for easy reference (they are Google links), but they are also linked in the body of this post.
The first part of the New Release Spotlight is the Google Slides presentation. This is downloadable, editable, and FREE!
This section is complete as of December 4, 2023. Yep, there are only 5 new titles!
A few reminders and items I have had questions about:
This presentation is great to play on a loop in the library! Students and teachers will inevitably ask you to order some of the books – a great way to develop a student-centered library collection.
You can download a two-page, printable list from this Google page. This list is also now complete.
The printable list is sorted by genre and topic. It includes book title and author’s last name. The list is fully-editable, so you can add or remove whatever you need to suit the needs of your library.
Books that fall into more than one genre are listed under each genre. This means some titles appear on the list more than once.
Since October 2019, I have added the New Release Spotlight books to The Ginormous Booklist. This is a huge Google spreadsheet that currently has over 3700 titles for K-12.
All 5 new December picture books have been added to The Ginormous. Scroll to the bottom for the newest titles. The December 2023 Picture Books Spotlight titles are #3732 – #3736 on The Ginormous Booklist.
The fourth part of the December 2023 Picture Book Spotlight is a sorting area by genre and topic.
The cover images below are clickable Amazon Affiliate links. If you use them to make a purchase, I will get a small commission from your purchase.
As I mentioned with the November 2023 New Release Spotlights, Amazon announced major changes to the Affiliates program a few weeks ago. Amazon is telling us that all previous Affiliates image links will be broken come January 1, 2024.
I am working on a solution, but if what they are saying happens, the cover images below may disappear in January 2024. If that happens, I will delete them from this post completely so there is no weird blank space.
We do not currently have any guidance from Amazon on how they want us to link images in 2024. I have a tentative plan, but I’m still waiting to see if we get any further guidance from Amazon. So far, they have been pretty quiet about the whole thing.
Because some books fall into multiple genre or topic categories, you will find some titles listed more than once below.
Please note that there are currently no December 2023 middle grade book releases that meet my criteria. Seriously, not a single one!
The New Release Spotlight began in May 2016 as a way to help librarians keep up with the many new children’s and YA books that are released each week.
Each week, school librarian Leigh Collazo compiles the New Release Spotlight using a combination of Follett’s Titlewave, Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes and Noble. Recommended grade levels represent the range of grade levels recommended by professional book reviewers. See the full selection criteria here.
Each month, there are far more books that meet my criteria than can make it on the Spotlight. When I have to make the tough decisions on what to include, I just use my “librarian judgment.” Would I buy this book for my own library? Would my students want to read this book? Is the cover appealing? Does it fill a need?
