Welcome to the Bank Street Children's Book Committee's (CBC) Searchable Best Books List, a tool designed to help educators, families, librarians, and others access developmentally appropriate and engaging books for young readers (ages birth - 18).

Our online Searchable Best Books List draws from the committee's annual Best Children's Books of the Year-beginning with the list of books published in 2000-with each featuring more than 600 high-quality titles for young readers.

To share feedback about the tool, please feel free to email bookcom@bankstreet.edu. To learn more about the CBC, visit https://www.bankstreet.edu/cbc/.

How to Perform a Search and Save a List

Betty Before X

by Ilyasah Shabazz

Ages: 9+

Published: 2018

Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux BFYR/Macmillan

ISBN: 978-0-374-30610-6

Keywords: Coming of Age, Malcolm X, Black history

Betty Sanders, who will one day marry Malcolm X, enjoys her friends, her adoptive family, and community volunteering in 1940's Detroit, but increasingly notices the blight of racial prejudice. Author's note, timeline.