2025 Ladybug Picture Book Award Winner! and more...

There were 22,057 votes cast this year at 170 sites throughout the state. The winning book received 6,032 votes. A flyer with the complete list of voting results will be available on the Ladybug Picture Book Award website soon.

   

Fake dating gets a magical twist in this enchanting queer romantic comedy where a witch worries that the real feelings brewing between her and her crush were sparked by an accidental love potion, and the only way out of the disastrous spell is a healthy dose of the truth—drink up, witches.

Potion maker and self-proclaimed “messy witch” Morgan Greenwood is sure she was hexed at birth. Not only did she drunkenly offer to fake date the woman of her dreams during the biennial New England Witches’ festival, but Rory Sandler, spellcasting champion and brilliant elemental witch—for reasons known only to the Goddess—accepted. It’s like every good luck spell Morgan ever cast came through at once, and it doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict this charade will end with a broken heart.

Or is the magic between them real? As Morgan and Rory prepare to fool everyone at the festival, their relationship starts to feel a whole lot less fake—right until Morgan realizes she might have screwed up the common relaxation potion she made for Rory and given her a love potion instead, breaking one of the most sacred Witch Council Laws.

To fulfill her promise to Rory, Morgan must somehow keep playing pretend while under the watchful eyes of Rory’s family and legion of fans. But to break the love potion, she’ll also have to prove how incompatible she and Rory really are. For a screwup like her, ruining their relationship should be easy—except every day, Morgan is becoming more bewitched by Rory herself. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Tori Anne Martin is the USA Today bestselling author of "This Spells Disaster", as well as romance and fantasy under other not-so-secret names. She lives in New Hampshire, along with her partner and their two cats, where she collects pen names, tattoos, and hoodies in shades of gray and black. If you can’t find her online, it’s because she’s lost in the woods.

   

The nomination form for the 2026 Ladybug Picture Book Award can be found here: 
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Ladybug2026nomination

In addition to bibliographical information about your nominee, we are asking for a sentence or two explaining why you chose to nominate the book.

Please nominate a picture book that meets the following criteria: 

•    Be published, in its current edition, within the last three years (2023-2025)
•    be currently in print
•    possess strong child appeal
•    have artistic quality with text that supports the illustrations
•    not be a title previously nominated as a finalist. (See previous nominations here: https://tinyurl.com/ladybugNOM)

****NEW THIS YEAR: Due to librarian input, we will be opening up the Ladybug Picture Book Award to include 4th graders. If you are able to include 4th graders in the Ladybug process, please do so!****

You may nominate as many books as you’d like, but they must follow the above criteria and you will need to complete the nomination survey separately for each nominated book.

The long-list of nominated titles will be announced in late January. 

   

In the still woods of small-town New Hampshire, a single gunshot shattered the quiet and the belief that everyone knew everyone.

In 1985, local mechanic Daniel Paquette was found dead in his driveway, one bullet through the chest. For twenty years, the case sat cold. No suspects. No closure. Only silence thick as pine sap and just as suffocating.

But truth doesn’t die. It hides behind loyalty, fear, and the fragile code of a town that prefers to forget. When the past finally cracked open, it revealed more than a killer: it exposed teenage secrets, buried guilt, and a community forced to reckon with what its silence had cost.

Whispers in the Pines: A Teenage Killer and the Silence of New Hampshire blends deep reporting with a restrained, haunting narrative to follow the investigation, confession, trial, and the long echo that reshaped an entire town. It asks the question no verdict can settle:

When everyone shares the secret, who carries the blame? --Publisher's blurb

   

Get a taste of some of the best hiking and mountain scenery along the entire 2,190-mile Appalachian Trail (AT). Campsites, Hostels, and Huts is the story of a father/daughter section hike of the AT in New Hampshire from the streets of Hanover and Dartmouth College to the Maine state line in the middle of the rugged Mahoosuc Mountains. You don't have to always "rough it" when hiking through the White Mountains in New Hampshire, as there are plenty of great lodging options, from backcountry campsites and shelters to roadside hiker hostels to the famous Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) High Huts. Come experience all of that and more in this firsthand account of an 18-day trek through some of the most breathtaking mountains in the northeast. --Publisher's blurb