New York City in Children's Books: Picture Books to Teen Novels Set in the City

New York City is a natural setting for children’s books, and it is easy to see why. A city of stoops, subways, laundromats, museums, libraries and corner phone booths gives a writer endless small places where a child’s story can happen. For a child who lives in New York, these books are a mirror. For a child who has never been, they are a way in.

Every book below is set, wholly or in large part, in New York City. Where the setting is suggested by the pictures rather than named in the text, we say so. Ages are editorial and approximate; individual children vary.

Picture books (about ages 2–8)

Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems (about 2–6). The city here is real: cartoon figures walk through photographs of an actual Brooklyn neighborhood on the way to the laundromat, where Trixie, too young to talk, loses her bunny and cannot make her dad understand. New York children can hunt for stoops and storefronts like their own. A Caldecott Honor book.

The Lonely Phone Booth by Peter Ackerman (about 4–8). In the cell-phone age, nobody needs the phone booth on its New York City street corner — until the power goes out and it gets a chance to prove its worth. A neat lesson about what a city keeps and what it throws away. Afterward, look around your own block for something old that people walk past every day.

Julián Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love (about 4–8). A subway ride, three women in mermaid costumes, and a boy who goes home and makes his own — with an abuela who answers with love rather than scolding. The city comes through in the pictures more than the words; Jessica Love told the Brooklyn Paper the book was inspired by Coney Island’s Mermaid Parade, which she has attended many times.

Planting Stories by Anika Aldamuy Denise (about 4–8). Here New York is where Pura Belpré became the New York Public Library’s first Puerto Rican librarian and shared stories with children in two languages. Read it before a library visit, wherever you live.

Middle grade (about ages 9–13)

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg (about 9–12). Claudia and her younger brother run away to live in secret inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and end up investigating a mysterious statue. A Newbery Medal winner, and the reason many children ask to visit the Met.

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh (about 9–12). Eleven-year-old Harriet watches her Manhattan neighborhood and writes down everything, including blunt remarks about her classmates — until they read the notebook. An excellent companion to the observation activity below.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (about 9–13). Set on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, this puzzle of a novel follows sixth-grader Miranda as notes keep arriving that seem to know what will happen next. Readers who love A Wrinkle in Time will catch the references. A Newbery Medal winner.

New Kid by Jerry Craft (about 9–13). According to the author’s site, Jordan travels each day from his apartment in Washington Heights to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, where he is starting seventh grade instead of the art school he wanted. Moving between those two parts of the city is the heart of this funny, sharp graphic novel, a Newbery Medal winner.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (about 10–14). Woodson grew up partly in South Carolina and partly in Brooklyn; the Brooklyn poems give a child’s-eye view of the city in the 1960s and 1970s, set against the South Carolina chapters.

For teens

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (older teens). In this verse novel for older teens, Xiomara, growing up in Harlem with a strict mother and questions about faith, finds her voice through slam poetry. Winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award and the Pura Belpré Author Award.

Related city books (not New York)

Some picture books capture city life without naming a city. The Snowy Day follows Peter through his city neighborhood after a snowfall, and Last Stop on Market Street follows CJ on a bus ride across the city with his grandmother. Both are good companions to the books above, but they do not say they are set in New York, so we have not counted them here. Boston readers will recognize Make Way for Ducklings.

Activity: a reading walk

A reading walk turns a child into the kind of observer the best city books are written by. It works in any neighborhood: a city block, a suburban street, a small-town main street. It takes 20 to 45 minutes.

Before you go

Read one of the books together. For younger children, Knuffle Bunny or The Lonely Phone Booth works well; for older ones, a chapter of Harriet the Spy or When You Reach Me. Talk about what the author or illustrator noticed: the laundromat in Knuffle Bunny, the phone booth nobody uses, the details Harriet writes down.

Give each child a small notebook and a pencil, or a clipboard for younger children who will draw.

On the walk

Choose two or three “noticing missions” depending on age:

• Ages 3–5: Find three things that are red. Find something old. Find a place where people wait (a bus stop, a bench, a doorway). Listen for three different sounds.
• Ages 6–8: Draw one building and one sign. Find something nobody is using, as in The Lonely Phone Booth. Count the kinds of shops or places on one block.
• Ages 9–12: Keep a notebook like Harriet’s, but with a rule: write what you see, not what you think about people. Note one thing that has changed since you last walked here. Look for clues about the past: old painted signs, dates on buildings, worn steps.

Stop at least once to sit still for two minutes and just watch. Many children find this the most surprising part.

Afterward

• Make a map. Draw the route, marking the places you noticed. Younger children can stick drawings onto a long strip of paper.
• Write a scene. Older children can write a short story set somewhere on the walk, with a lost object, a mysterious note, or a change in the weather.
• Compare. How was your neighborhood like or unlike the one in the book? What would an illustrator need to draw to show your street?

A note on Harriet: her notebook gets her into trouble because she writes blunt observations about real people, and her classmates read them. That makes a useful conversation about the difference between observing and judging, and about privacy.

More ways in

If you live in New York or are visiting, many of these books suggest places to see for yourself: a branch of the public library after Planting Stories, a museum after Mixed-Up Files, a subway ride after Julián Is a Mermaid. Wherever you live, your own public library can help you find books set in your area; see Using Your Public Library. For more stories about where children live, browse picture books and middle grade, or save these titles to a reading list.