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

Our Own Little Paradise

Marianne Kaurin

Ages: 9+

Published: 2022

Publisher: Arctis Books

ISBN: 978-1-64690-018-3

Keywords: peer pressure, classism, ostracism, friendship, depression, poverty, mothers and daughters

In Norway, on the last day of school, an impoverished and humiliated sixth grader blurts falsely that she'll vacation in “the tropics.” A new classmate discovers her lie.