Two PYR Titles Win 2025 NYT/NYPL Best Illustrated Children’s Books Awards
WIND WATCHERS by Micha Archer (Nancy Paulsen Books) and MAKING ART by Diana Ejaita (RISE x Penguin Workshop) have won 2025 New York Times / New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Book Awards. The two titles were named among ten total winners and chosen on the basis of artistic merit.
The list is chosen each year by a rotating panel of expert judges. This year’s judges were Hans Christian Andersen Medal-winning illustrator Peter Sis, children’s book author Tracy Baptiste, and children’s librarian Amber Moller. The judges reviewed nearly 800 books that were submitted for the award.
You can read the list of all ten winners here.
Seasons come and go, and the wind wafts its way through them all. This delights a family of children, and when they ask the wind, “How will you blow today?” they get a kick out of not knowing what answer they’ll get. Will the wind send gentle breezes that tickle and delight, cooling them off on hot days? Or strong gusts that knock their hats off and send them running inside on stormy days? One thing is for certain to our wind watchers—the wind is an always-changing wonder and constantly takes their breath away!
Micha Archer (MichaArcher.com) wrote and illustrated the Caldecott Honor Book Wonder Walkers, as well as the Ezra Jack Keats Award winner Daniel Finds a Poem and its companions, What’s New, Daniel? and Daniel’s Good Day, and has also illustrated several other picture books, including Girl Running (by Annette Bay Pimentel). Micha works in inks and collage on paper she creates with homemade stamps and layered tissue paper. She comes from a long line of artists and teachers and taught for many years in a kindergarten. She lives in western Massachusetts in the house she and her husband built, surrounded by gardens and forests to roam in.
Art is for everyone! From found objects to sidewalk chalk, from homemade instruments to breakdancing, from building with blocks to molding clay, art is natural and healing. Readers will be encouraged by the invitation to create anything, anywhere, with any materials. Inclusive and expansive, Ejaita portrays a wide cast of characters exploring their own feelings and ideas, accompanied by a poignant, yet easily understood, text. This deceptively simple and stunningly composed picture book offers children a sense of what art can be, and the ways in which it adds beauty to our lives.
Diana Ejaita works as an illustrator and textile designer in Berlin. What sets her illustrations apart is a combination of dramatically contrasting areas of black and white with soft patterns and textures that create images portraying the strength of femininity. Born in Cremona, Nigeria, her aesthetic pays homage to her lineage. “I am mostly into Central African culture; I love its literature, arts, and textile traditions. But as a child of migration and of interracial parents I am very driven by the issues of colonial/post-colonial effects, racial and gender discrimination, and identity research.” She lives with her baby/muse, Mathi, in Berlin and Lagos.