In this week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when time seems to slow down a bit, those of us in the Literary Initiatives Office hope you have some time to read a good book. We asked Mac Barnett, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature; Arthur Sze, the United States Poet Laureate; and Geraldine Brooks, the 2025 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction winner, to tell us about some of their favorite reads this past year. We hope these memories below give you some reading inspiration!
Mac Barnett
Could you name a book you read this past year that stuck with you, and why?
Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág, a picture book from 1928 that I read and discussed with thousands of elementary school students across the country, who helped me see new things in an old book.
What are your favorite books/book items you’ve been gifted, and what books/book items do you like to give?
My favorite book I’ve been given is Impossible Object by Nicholas Mosley, from my beloved college professor, Paul Saint-Amour.
My favorite book to give people is Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, a novel set in Britain after a nuclear disaster, written in a mutated futuro-Chaucerian English.
Are there any holiday books or stories from your childhood that you could share with us?
My mom would bring out our box of Christmas books every year with our Christmas ornaments, and put them back away when we got rid of our tree (on December 26th). It made them special. They were both familiar, because I remembered reading them in years past, and strange, because I was always coming to them as a different person.
Arthur Sze
Could you name a book you read this past year that stuck with you, and why?
I read Shangyang Fang’s Study of Sorrow: Translations (in manuscript before it was published this year by Copper Canyon Press) with great pleasure. Shangyang has beautifully translated poems by twenty-nine Song dynasty poets in the ci or lyric genre, and so many of these poems and poets are unknown to American readers.
What are your favorite books/book items you’ve been gifted, and what books/book items do you like to give?
One of my favorite books I was given was by Dennis Tedlock. He gave me his 2000 Years of Mayan Literature.
I like to give Forrest Gander’s book of poetry, Be With, Carol Moldaw’s Go Figure, CD Wright’s Deepstep Come Shining, and Jennifer Foerster’s The Maybe Bird.
Are there any holiday books or stories from your childhood that you could share with us?
As a child, I remember I especially enjoyed reading books relating to Greek mythology.
Geraldine Brooks
Could you name a book you read this past year that stuck with you, and why?
The Names by Florence Knapp is an accomplished first novel that explores the reverberating consequences of a single choice. Three narratives diverge from the moment a woman must decide whether to name her son according to the dictates of her controlling husband, or to make a different choice. It’s an original, resonant and emotionally rich novel.
What are your favorite books/book items you’ve been gifted, and what books/book items do you like to give?
When I was young, a woman I never met—a friend of my grandfather’s—gifted me a book every year. These were eclectic, thoughtful choices that always managed to meet me where I was as a young reader and lift me up a step. I especially recall Lamb’s Tales From Shakespeare, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (before it was famous) and the I Ching. I have no idea why she did this, but I am forever grateful. I try to pay it forward to seeking out especially beautiful editions of favorite children’s books for the kids in my life.
Are there any holiday books or stories from your childhood that you could share with us?
I especially recall the Christmas morning when I was five years old. After the magic of the full stocking, my parents did an unusual thing and turned on the television. (We never watched television in the morning.) It was the 1935 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and even though special effects in those days were unsophisticated, there was a gauzy magic to the forest sets and the fluttering fairies that absolutely enchanted me. Since Christmas in my Australian home place is in midsummer, it seemed entirely possible to me that Shakespeare’s fairy queen might be out there, flitting through the eucalyptus-scented foliage.