Gift Books for Children from Nature and Gardens
Robin Schachat
This year we have a bumper crop of books for children of all ages; usually my choices of nature books tend toward picture books for the very youngest. It was a pleasure to find so much variation to recommend this time!!
We’ll start with a picture book for the very young, with stencils cut into the pages that show life going on in a TREE, by Britta Teckentrup, This one has actually been around for a few years, and I had missed it. It follows a tree, and the owl who lives in it, through the course of a year during which bear cubs, squirrels, foxes, birds, and bees emerge in spring, frolic in summer, gather food in fall, and then go back to sleep in winter. It’s a brilliantly colorful charmer, all art and only one rhyming couplet per page, for parents to read to children ages 2 to 4 (all age approximations are made by Amazon).
A grand classic and Caldecott Honor Book from the 1970’s, John Steptoe’s The Story of Jumping Mouse, has just been re-released in paperback form. This is definitely a book for children to read along with beloved family members. Based on a native American tale of the origin of the eagle, it tells the tale of a mouse who sets off to experience a new and distant world. Along the way he gives up very important parts of himself to friendly animals he meets on his travels, until a Magical Frog transforms the kind and adventurous mouse into a soaring bald eagle. Ages 4-8.
For the next age group we have The Flower Garden by Renee Kurilla. This is the story of a little girl named Anna who learns that without bees, there will be no blueberries. She calls her dear friend Tess, who is afraid of bees, and explains that they must plant a flower garden to feed the bees. Poor fearful Tess! She goes with Anna to the woods and plants flowers for the scary bees, where they encounter a strange and slightly terrifying underground world of magical gnomes and animals. But when they return from the underworld – or was it a nap? – there is a happy bee pollinating their brand new flower! This is another book of brilliant colors, laid out as a cross between a picture book, a comic book, and a read-for-yourself story. Ages 6-9.
Definitely a chapter book to be read by one’s self, our next offering is Heartwood Hotel, a True Home, by Kallie George. It’s a story for the end of fall and start of winter, a story in which poor, lonely Mona the Mouse finds her forever home, her family history, and her new family of friends in a magnificent old tree that opens to reveal the Heartwood Hotel, where all are welcome, large and small. Mona and her friend Brumble, an extremely sleepy bear, save Heartwood and its residents from the wolves who threaten their world as the first winter snow begins to fall. Ages 5 -10. This is the first of a series of four books, so if your little pal likes this one, there are more!
My next choice may seem a bit odd, and it is definitely not for little ones. It’s a book of short stories in the style of a graphic novel by Emily Carroll, Through the Woods. Graphic novels are not my thing, and frankly neither are creepy horror stories, but this book is a blockbuster, and a New York Times bestseller. Mix folk tales with gothic stories with comic books with a dose of Stephen King, hide them in the deep, dark woods, and here you are. Lots of fun for teens 14 and up.
Also for teens, here is a humorous and educational volume that will take them on a tour of ecosystems around the world – including the role of humans in each! Ecology is often taught as a philosophical construct. Instead, this book, The Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth, offers a fun and bizarre, well-illustrated view of how geography, animals, insects, soil, water, plants, people, and other factors interact to create our world. It’s a fine introduction for teens to the concept of ecology in all its variations. I recommend it highly. Young teens to YA.
My final recommendation is a book originally published for adults, but I cannot imagine a teen who would not love to receive it. It is 365 Days of Art in Nature by Lorna Scobie. It is emphatically not a coloring book, but it is a book in which, for every day of the year, the reader is encouraged to draw or manipulate art on the page to find new ways of seeing nature. I recommend giving this book along with a box of colored pencils or markers – water colors would work if your gift recipient is not very sloppy nor addicted to washes – and see what develops.