Elizabeth’s Best: Things I Love and Think You Might Love Too
I’ve always been someone who loves sharing good things.
If I read a book I love, I tell people about it. If I find a product that actually works, I want my friends to know. If I eat somewhere wonderful, discover a beautiful place, hear a song I can’t stop playing, find the perfect gift, or stumble across something that makes everyday life a little better, chances are I’m going to tell someone.
That’s really what Elizabeth’s Best is all about.
This isn’t a list of things I think I’m supposed to like. It isn’t about chasing trends or telling you that you absolutely need seventeen new things in your life. And it definitely isn’t about pretending everything is “the best thing ever.”
It’s simply a collection of things I genuinely enjoy, use, read, watch, visit, give, recommend, or think are worth knowing about.
Sometimes I’ll share five books I think are worth reading. Another time it might be five beauty products I actually use, five gifts I’d happily give my best friend, five places I love, five things in my home that make me ridiculously happy, five shows worth watching, or five discoveries I think deserve a little more attention.
And yes, there will probably be Maine things.
There will almost certainly be blueberries.
And coffee has a very good chance of showing up. Frequently.
What I love most about recommendations is that they’re personal. Something doesn't have to be expensive, famous, new, or perfect to make my list. It just has to be something I genuinely think is worth sharing.
I also want Elizabeth’s Best to be a conversation.
I want to know what you're reading. What you've discovered. What you bought and actually loved. Where you've traveled. What you're watching. What made your life easier. What made you laugh. What surprised you. What you're giving everyone for Christmas. What little thing is making an ordinary Tuesday considerably better.
Because some of the best things I've discovered in my life came from someone saying to me, “Elizabeth, you have to try this.”
So consider this me doing the same for you.
Welcome to Elizabeth’s Best.
Five things at a time. Things worth knowing about, trying, reading, watching, visiting, giving, or simply loving.
I have a feeling we're going to have a lot of fun with this.
With gratitude,
Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino
Elizabeth’s Best is my personal collection of things worth sharing. Five at a time, I’ll share books, products, places, experiences, gifts, entertainment, discoveries, and everyday favorites I genuinely love and think you might love too.
Elizabeth’s Best: 5 More New Children’s Books Worth Adding to Your Bookshelf
I have always loved children's books. I loved reading them with my four boys when they were little, and now, as a children's book author myself, I probably appreciate them even more.
A really good children's book does something remarkable. It can make a child laugh while giving an adult something to think about. It can make a difficult subject easier to talk about. It can turn something completely ordinary into an adventure. And sometimes it can simply give us an excuse to sit next to someone we love and read together.
That is why I thought children's books would be the perfect place to begin Elizabeth's Best here.
Elizabeth's Best is pretty simple. Five things at a time, I'll share things I'm reading, using, watching, visiting, giving, discovering, or simply loving. Nothing has to be trendy, expensive, famous, or perfect to make the list. It just has to be something I genuinely think is worth sharing.
For this first list, we're going back to the bookshelf.
Here are five newer children's books that caught my attention.
There is something about the word home that carries so much more meaning than an address.
In Home Is a Wish, Julia Kuo explores what happens when a child has to leave a familiar home and move somewhere new. The story makes room for the sadness of leaving behind the people, places, routines, and little details that made one place feel like yours while also allowing for the possibility that a new place can eventually become home.
Published in 2025, the book was included among Kirkus Reviews' best picture books of the year about families, which praised its comforting approach to children experiencing change.
I especially appreciate that the story doesn't rush a child through those feelings. Adults sometimes want to make everything better immediately. But missing something matters. Missing people matters. Missing home matters.
Why I Love It: I believe we can honor what we're leaving behind while still being hopeful about what comes next. That's true when we're five, and frankly, it's still true when we're fifty-five.
Read This With: A child moving to a new house, changing schools, experiencing a family transition, or learning that home can sometimes be more than one place.
Three creators. One butterfly. And a wonderfully imaginative look at becoming.
Papilio follows a caterpillar through the stages of metamorphosis, with each creator taking on a different portion of the story. The result is playful, funny, visually interesting, and full of personality.
Kirkus named it one of the best picture-book read-alouds of 2025 and singled it out as a particularly fresh take on the familiar caterpillar-to-butterfly story.
Of course, I am probably always going to be drawn to a story about change.
But what I like here is that change isn't presented as one giant dramatic moment. Becoming happens in stages. There are awkward parts. Uncertain parts. Exciting parts. And eventually something emerges that couldn't have existed without everything that came before it.
Sound familiar?
Why I Love It: It's a delightful way to introduce children to one of nature's most amazing transformations while quietly reminding the rest of us that becoming takes time.
Read This With: A curious child who loves bugs, butterflies, nature, science, silly stories, or asking approximately 847 questions before breakfast.
Some children's books entertain us. Others help us find words for things that are very difficult to explain.
Our Lake is one of those books.
Angie Kang's debut picture book follows two brothers after the loss of their father as they return to a place filled with memories of him. Their grief doesn't look exactly the same, which is one of the things I find particularly important about this story. Even people in the same family can experience the same loss very differently.
Kirkus included Our Lake among its best family picture books of 2025, calling attention to its sensitive treatment of navigating loss.
We sometimes try so hard to protect children from grief that we forget children grieve, too. They need safe ways to talk about missing someone, remembering someone, being angry, being sad, laughing again, and discovering that love doesn't disappear when someone dies.
Why I Love It: It respects children's emotions. It doesn't tell them how grief is supposed to look. That's important because there isn't one right way to miss someone.
Read This With: A child experiencing loss or a family looking for a gentle way to begin a conversation about grief, memory, love, and the people who remain part of us.
Okay, enough making everyone cry.
Let's talk trains.
In Caboose, a child desperately wants to ride in the very last car of the train. Sounds simple enough, right?
Not necessarily.
This is one of those books that takes a very specific childhood obsession and runs with it. It's funny, energetic, and exactly the kind of story that makes reading aloud fun. Kirkus named it one of its best picture-book read-alouds of 2025 and highlighted its laugh-out-loud appeal.
I love when children's books don't underestimate how intensely children can care about something adults consider completely insignificant.
The last car of the train can matter.
A lot.
Why I Love It: Because not every children's book needs to solve a problem or deliver a profound life lesson. Sometimes a book should make a child laugh and beg, “Read it again!”
Read This With: The train-obsessed child in your life. You know exactly who I'm talking about.
Of course I'm ending with a book about books.
The Keeper of Stories introduces children to the extraordinary efforts to save Jewish books and manuscripts from destruction during World War II and preserve the stories, history, and culture they contained.
It's history, but underneath the history is an idea I care deeply about: stories matter.
Books carry voices. They carry memories. They allow people who lived long before us to speak to people they could never have imagined meeting. And when we preserve stories, we're preserving pieces of humanity.
Kirkus selected The Keeper of Stories as one of its best nonfiction picture books of 2025 and described it as a testament to books' ability to bring people together.
For children growing up surrounded by screens and instant information, I think there is something especially meaningful about understanding that books themselves have histories and that preserving a story can sometimes be an act of extraordinary courage.
Why I Love It: I'm a writer. Of course I believe stories matter. But I also believe children should understand that their stories matter, their families' stories matter, and the stories of people who came before them matter.
Read This With: A budding reader, writer, history lover, future librarian, or the child who already understands that walking into a room filled with books feels a little bit magical.
What Are You Reading With the Children in Your Life?
One of my favorite things about children's books is that you never really outgrow them.
We may eventually stop sitting on someone's lap while they read to us. We learn to turn the pages ourselves. We move on to chapter books and novels and all the books that come afterward.
But a beautiful picture book can still stop us.
It can make us laugh. It can help us understand someone else's experience. It can remind us of being little. It can give us words for grief or change or hope. Or it can simply remind us that riding in the caboose is a perfectly reasonable thing to get extremely excited about.
And maybe that's one of the reasons I'll always love them.
Now it's your turn. What newer children's book have you discovered that you can't stop recommending? Tell me in the comments. I'm always looking for another wonderful book to add to my shelf.
With gratitude,
Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino
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