March Book Madness 2025

I am thrilled to share our family's choices for this year's March Book Madness! This has become one of our favorite yearly traditions to encourage a love of reading.

My children and I have carefully selected 16 picture books from various genres that we have never previously recommended and hope you'll love, and we've put them into brackets in a printable format.

Here's how it works: Download a bracket here. Print it out, then during the month of March, read the books aloud at your own pace. Let your children vote on their favorites, and add each favorite to the line in the next round. Keep reading and voting until you agree on an overall winner!

You can check these out from your local library, or purchase on Amazon (see affiliate links below) or another bookseller of your choice. Hopefully, some of these titles become beloved family favorites! These books are primarily for ages 5-10, but there's a little bit of everything here. My children are 5, 7, 10, and 12 and enjoy all of these stories.

Who's in??

HERE ARE THE BOOKS WE CHOSE: 

Stories about the passage of time

• The Yellow Bus by Loren Long

• The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton

People who made the world more beautiful

• Because Barbara by Sarah Mackenzie

• The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane by C. M. Millen

Fascinating true stories

• Mailing May by Michael O. Tunnell

• Honey, the Dog Who Saved Abe Lincoln by Shari Swanson

Bicycle tales

• Noodles on a Bicycle by Kyo Maclear

• Emmanuel’s Dream by Laurie Ann Thompson

Sea adventures

• The Ship in the Window by Travis Jonker

• Follow the Moon Home by Philippe Cousteau & Deborah Hopkinson

Tales of birds and castles

• The Hawk of the Castle by Danna Smith
• Knight Owl and the Early Bird by Christopher Denise

Stories about making new friends

• Home in a Lunchbox by Cherry Mo
  
• The Man Who Didn't Like Animals by Deborah Underwood

Woodland adventures

• Home of the Wild by Louise Greig
• Mina by Matthew Forsythe

In the event that you're not able to find all of these at your local library, here are a few more options (some of which I've recommended previously) that you may enjoy!

• Because by Mo Willems

• Dancing Hands by Margarita Engle

• After the Fall by Dan Santat

• My Grandfather’s Coat by Jim Aylesworth

• Step Right Up: How Doc and Jim Key Taught the World About Kindness by Donna Janell Bowman

• The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka