2026 Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List Announced

The Texas Library Association is thrilled to announce the new Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List! The purpose of the Texas Topaz Reading List is to provide children, teens, and adults with recommended nonfiction titles that stimulate reading for pleasure and personal learning. It is intended for recreational reading and is not designed to support any particular curriculum.

Each year, the Texas Topaz Committee considers nonfiction books published three years prior to the release of the list. This year, the committee selected 51 recommended titles for young readers and 33 titles recommended for adults. All titles on the new list were published between 2023 and 2025.

Full 2026 Texas Topaz Reading List

Topaz Youth Annotated

Topaz Adult Annotated

Below are recommended titles from the new Texas Topaz Reading List the received unanimous votes from the entire Committee.

Unanimous Recommendations

 Grades K-2

• The Blue Jays That Grew a Forest by Lynn Street, illustrated by Anne Hunter (Margaret Quinlin Books, an imprint of Peachtree Publishing Company Inc., 2025)
• Meet the Mini-Mammals: A Night at the Natural History Museum by Melissa Stewart, illustrated by Brian Lies (Beach Lane Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, 2025)
• Safe Crossing by Kari Percival (Chronicle Books, 2025)

Grades 3-5

• Dragonflies of Glass: The Story of Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls by Susan Goldman Ruben, illustrated by Susanna Chapman (Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of ABRAMS, 2025) 
• The Secret World of Spiderwebs by Jan Beccaloni, illustrated by Namasri Niumim (Thames & Hudson, 2025)
• The World Entire: A True Story of an Extraordinary World War II Rescue by Elizabeth Brown, illustrated by Melissa Castrillón (Chronicle Books, 2025)

Grades 6-8

• The Bard and the Book: How the First Folio Saved the Plays of William Shakespeare from Oblivion by Ann Bausum, illustrated by Marta Sevilla (Peachtree Publishing Company Inc., 2024)
• Fighter in the Woods: The True Story of a Jewish Girl Who Joined the Partisans in World War II by Joshua M. Greene (Scholastic Focus, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., 2025)
• Manga Biographies: Charles M. Schulz, The Creator Snoopy and Peanuts by Yuzuri Kuki, translated by Muri Morimoto (Udon, 2024)
• Spying on Spies: How Elizabeth Smith Friedman Broke the Nazis’ Secret Codes by Marissa Moss (Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of ABRAMS, 2024)
• Wish I Was a Baller By Amar Shah, illustrated by Rashad Doucet (Graphix, an imprint of Scholastic, 2025)

Grades 9-12

• White House Secrets: Medical Lies and Cover-Ups by Gail Jarrow (Calkins Creek, an imprint of Astra Books for Young Readers, 2025)

Adults

• Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While Also in an Actual Cult!) by Bethany Joy Lenz (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
• Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel’s Tween Empire by Ashley Spencer (St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2024)
• Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist by Jane Rosenberg (Hanover Square Press, 2024)
• Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley (MCD, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024)
• Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home by Stephen Starring Grant (Stardust73, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, 2025)
• No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson by Gardiner Harris (Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2025)
• Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton (Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2025)
• Taking Care: The Story of Nursing and Its Power to Change Our World by Sarah DiGregorio (Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins, 2023)
• We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, 2023)