160+ Books Selected for 2026 Rainbow Book List

The American Library Association’s Rainbow Round Table has just announced its 2026 Rainbow Book List of 169 librarian-approved titles that celebrate LGBTQIA+ youth and families. It’s the third-highest number since the list began in 2008. Let’s take a closer look, with some exclusive charts showing trends over the years.

The 2025 Rainbow Book List

This year, the Rainbow Book List Committee of the ALA’s Rainbow Round Table reviewed 417 books published between July 1, 2024 and December 31, 2025, and selected 169 fiction and non-fiction titles for toddlers through young adults.

Unlike the Stonewall Awards, which recognize only a very few titles at the peak of excellence, the Rainbow Book List is a larger but still selective collection, intended to help librarians, educators, parents, and others find “quality books with significant and authentic LGBTQIA+ content,” as the Rainbow Book List website explains.

As they have done in previous years, the committee also chose Top 10 Titles for Young Readers and Top 10 Titles for Teen Readers. Here are the (unordered) ones for young readers (through middle grade)—click the images to read my own reviews:

Check out the complete list of titles to see the ones for teens (which I love but don’t typically cover here) and the full lists for all ages. (One small quibble: the first paragraph of the committee’s post says the books “celebrate the lives, experiences, and families of LGBTQIA+ youth”—but the fact is, the books also celebrate youth who may not be LGBTQIA+ but have LGBTQIA+ parents or other family members. The post later notes that “this list is created with LGBTQIA+ youth and families at its heart,” which feels more inclusive—but I wish they’d been more clear about this in the first sentence.)

Why the Rainbow Book List Matters

The Rainbow Book List can help librarians advise readers, add to their collections, and ensure children and youth of all ages have access to quality, inclusive books. It offers the imprimatur of the oldest and largest library association in the world, which can help convince communities to keep these books on the shelves. Given the ongoing attempts to ban LGBTQ-inclusive books, that is more important than ever, and as the committee noted, “the continued existence of the Rainbow Book List is both necessary and intentional.” They add, however, that “Despite these challenges, we remain encouraged by the abundance of powerful, joyful, and necessary LGBTQIA+ stories being published.”

The committee notes, too, that “this list is created with LGBTQIA+ youth and families at its heart,” but that “These books are offered not only as mirrors for those seeking representation, but as windows for understanding, empathy, and connection across our communities.”

My own Mombian Database of LGBTQ Family Books includes more titles with a wider range of quality, from excellent to less so (which I try to indicate in my reviews), to help people who may come across any of the books and want some guidance, or be looking for representation that may only appear in a book whose literary or artistic quality doesn’t quite meet the Rainbow Book List’s standards. I could debate a few titles I really liked that didn’t make their list, but I’m not going to argue about books with librarians. I’d like to think there’s a need for many opinions and approaches. My database also only includes children’s books up through middle grade (and books for LGBTQ parents); it doesn’t cover YA since I’m only one person and need to sleep.

The Big Picture

Below are updated versions of two charts I first created a number of years ago. (See Notes on Method below for how I’ve tried to keep consistency over time despite changes in how the committee has categorized things.) The first chart shows the number of Rainbow Book List titles since the list’s founding in 2008. (The 2008 list covered books published between 2005-2007; each subsequent list covered the year and a half before the list’s publication.) Even this doesn’t fully show the sweeping change in LGBTQ-inclusive titles, though; several of the picture book picks in the earlier years, for example, had vague or allegorical queer content. Today’s books, on the whole, are more likely to show clearly queer characters. You’ll see the big leap starting with 2019’s list, which covered books published between July 2017 and December 2018.

This year’s selection of 169 titles is the third-highest since the list launched in 2008, behind 2025’s 175 and 2023’s record 193. While this seems encouraging, I don’t think it necessarily contradicts evidence seen elsewhere that publishers are pulling back on queer titles. Children’s books are often acquired two or three years before they’re published, so we may be seeing titles that were already in the pipeline before the climate became as difficult as it is now. Time will tell. Additionally, since this is a selective list, it’s also not a purely empirical look at how many queer titles have been published—but it helps give us a sense of the general trends in quality titles.

The second chart shows the number of books the Committee evaluated each year before making their final selections. This chart starts in 2013, when they began regularly reporting this data. Again, the big jump was in 2019’s list, covering books published mid-2017 through 2018. This year’s 417 evaluated is the lowest number since 2020, but a couple of years in between had 450, which is close, so I’m not sure this is evidence of a conclusive drop-off (although it doesn’t contradict it). Again, it just helps paint a general picture.

The fact that the committee still evaluates so many titles and selects a much smaller number, too (averaging 24% since 2013), speaks both to the number of LGBTQ-inclusive books being published and the fact that many of them still have a ways to go in terms of quality and “significant and authentic” LGBTQ content. Let’s hope that authors find ways of improving their skills and getting feedback on their drafts. I’ll also suggest that prospective authors read widely among existing LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ books and other diverse children’s titles before embarking on their own efforts.

For a bit of history, here’s my interview with Nel Ward, chair of the Rainbow Book List Committee when it launched in 2008. It’s been a pleasure watching the number of titles grow and diversify over the years.

As always, many thanks to the librarians who put together the Rainbow Book List and to all of the librarians everywhere whose recommendations and support (often in the face of increasingly harsh opposition) continue to positively impact the lives of so many young people and families. Thanks, too, to the authors, illustrators, and publishers creating these books for the readers who need them.

Please also check out my earlier post about this year’s ALA Youth Media Awards, which honored LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ books (among others) in different ways.