Is it possible to have too many good books? Nah—but they can be hard to manage. The fall children’s list is immense, an astonishing annual event that finds me working in increasingly constricted quarters as the books pile up around me. And boy, are there some good books in those piles. Here are just a few.

Will there ever be a generation of children that does not love dinosaur books? I hope not. This fall sees excellent offerings for dinophiles in diapers all the way up to aspiring middle-grade paleontologists. Joan Holub and Chris Dickason continue their Hello… board-book series with Hello Dinosaurs!, a rollicking read-aloud that gracefully incorporates “carnivore” without skipping a beat. Elementary-age picture-book readers will thrill to Dennis Nolan’s Dinosaur Feathers, a visual and sonic treat that presents a parade of dinosaurs in evolutionary order leading up to modern birds. Mike Lowery, meanwhile, gives young middle graders a survey of Everything Awesome About Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Beasts that really delivers on its claim. Finally, in The First Dinosaur,Ian Lendler offers older middle graders a fascinating look at the beginnings of the science of paleontology.

Critics often look askance at celebrity books, but this fall’s crop includes a handful of good ones. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who has Type 1 diabetes, pens a sensitive, cheerful exploration of disability and chronic illness, encouraging children to Just Ask! As illustrated by Rafael López, the children who answer readers’ imagined questions are a notably and refreshingly diverse group. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o introduces children to Sulwe, a dark-skinned black girl who learns to see her own beauty. Vashti Harrison contributes darkly luminous illustrations that bring Sulwe to life. And for middle graders, TV, film, and stage actor Maulik Pancholy’s semiautobiographical The Best at It gives them the story of queer Indian American seventh grader Rahul Kapoor, who sees becoming a Mathlete as his way to beat middle school.

Perhaps most exciting, this fall sees a blossoming of books by Indigenous authors and illustrators, long largely overlooked by the industry. There are such established creators as Julie Flett (Cree/Métis), whose picture book Birdsong presents a lovely, quiet story of intergenerational friendship, and archaeologist Eldon Yellowhorn (Piikani), who, with co-author Kathy Lowinger (who is white), delivers a powerful Indigenous look at North American history for middle graders. Joining them are several creators new to children’s books. Sibert honoree Traci Sorell (Cherokee) collaborates with two of them: illustrator Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva/Scots-Gaelic), who depicts life At the Mountain’s Base, Sorell’s story of a fictional Native woman in the U.S. military during World War II; and co-author Charlene Willing McManis (Umpqua), who is, sadly, deceased but whose family’s relocation from Oregon to Los Angeles after the U.S. government declares their tribe “terminated” forms the basis Indian No More.

The picture-book debuts are particularly bountiful. Jennifer Leason and her great-uncle Norman Chartrand (both Salteaux-Métis Anishinaabek) team up for a bilingual picture book that recalls a moment from Chartrand’s youth in Blueberry Patch / Mayabeekmaneeboon. Kevin Noble Maillard (Mekusukey Seminole) celebrates the resilience of Native foodways with Fry Bread; Peruvian American illustrator Juana Martinez-Neal contributes illustrations that sensitively depict the vigorous diversity within America’s Native nations. And author Brittany Luby (Anishinaabe) and illustrator Michaela Goade (Tlingit) contribute Encounter, which provocatively imagines an alternative first contact in which Indigenous Fisher meets European Sailor and colonization does not ensue.

For middle graders, novelist Christine Day (Upper Skagit) sensitively explores family separation in I Can Make This Promise, the story of biracial Edie (Suquamish/Duwamish and white), whose investigations into her mother’s past fuel her coming-of-age. With assistance from his wife, Elaine (Cree and Chipewyan), and Mindy Willett (who is white), Cree elder Henry Beaver shares his traditions with his grandchildren and readers in Sharing Our Truths / Tapwe, Tessa Macintosh’s photographs showing the family harvesting salt, trapping beaver, and more.

Let us hope that 2020 sees a continuation of this new attention to Native creators; for now, happy reading!

Vicky Smith is the children’s editor.