Windy, rainy, snowy weather is here – and the temperatures are dropping. It’s time to gather in the rest of the vegetables and fruits from the garden before it freezes. Here are some great picture books, on the subject, that can be enjoyed by all ages.
A Year With Marmalade, by Alison Reynolds, and delightfully illustrated by Heath McKenzie, is an adventure through the seasons. Maddy and Ella are best friends, but Maddy is moving away for a year so she asks Ella to take care of her cat, Marmalade, until she returns the following fall. Marmalade is shy and doesn’t play with Ella in the leaves or when she stomps through the rain. But one day in the winter, Ella finds her cold feet warmed by Marmalade and the rest of winter, spring and summer they enjoy each other. Then it’s fall again and her friend returns. The girls are drawn without color, but color is accentuated all around them. The text is unique with different styles and sizes making this a perfect lesson in friendship and seasons.
Let’s Go Nuts! Seeds We Eat, by April Pulley Sayre, is my kind of book because I love nuts! This informative book is full of brilliant photos of the many different types of nuts including many that youngsters may not know. The rhyming throughout the book is clever and simple. Be sure to check out the back pages of the “Scoop on Seeds” with even more information.
Flora’s Very Windy Day, by Jeanne Birdsall, and painted with watercolors, ink and pastels by Matt Phelan, is a clever story that was originally published in 2010. This reprint is now available in paperback. Flora is extremely irritated with her young brother as he just spilled her paints again. Mother sends them both outside even though the fall weather is windy and is blowing leaves everywhere. Flora is happy to go out in the wind with her “super-special heavy-duty red boots.” But the wind blows her little brother up high in the sky and she must quickly remove her boots to be blown up high as well in order to save him. A bird, a rainbow, even a cloud, ask if they can keep her little brother. But she realizes she really does want to keep her young sibling after all. The pictures all feel light as air as you see Flora and her brother twist and turn in the air.
Please Bring Balloons, by Lindsay Ward, takes young Emma on an adventure of a lifetime. When she got off a large white polar bear on a carousel, she noticed a note “peeking out of the polar bear’s saddle”. She opened it and read that the bear wanted her to bring balloons. Soon the bear and Emma fly high into the evening sky where you see the lights of the city far below. Eventually they end up in the Arctic where they “floated on icebergs, scaled icy mountains and trudged through knee-deep snow.” Her polar bear gets her back just in time for bed. The beautiful illustrations were created with cut paper, watercolor and pencil.
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Holly Newton
Newton’s Book News