Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature is a visual feast of colorful, mixed-media images and poetic descriptions that celebrate the most everyday and relatable aspects of nature. It's organized by seasons, and each double pages serves as a vignette of various animals and acts of nature that happen during that season -- from birds building nests and tadpoles hatching in ponds to gardening, wind, snow, fungi, bees, worms, and many other things that are accessible right outside our doors and windows. 

I think the illustrations are the best part, with their textures and color pallette, but the text also easily evokes the sights, sounds, and experience of being outdoors, using simple language. This book is fairly long (108 pages), and covers quite a few topics, but is also short enough to read in one sitting if a child has a long enough attention span. 

Scrounged From: Amazon (a Christmas present for our five-year-old)

Format: Hardcover
Author: Nicola Davies
Illustrator: Mark Hearld
Pages: 108
Content Advisory: None

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Perhaps it's because they were the inspiration for cute and cuddly teddy bears, but bears have been a mainstay in children's literature, especially since that famous bear of "very little brain," Winnie the Pooh. Here are some of our favorite picture books that feature bears as the main character(s):

1. Though it's a long-time classic, I didn't discover Corduroy until adulthood, but my children and I have really enjoyed it. It's nostalgic in terms of the way that many children look at their toys -- as sentient beings that must be loved and given a good home. In the end, despite his missing button, Corduroy is united with a caring owner who loves him just the way he is.

2. Little Bear's Friend is a childhood favorite of mine, and I'm sure of many others who have also practiced their reading skills on these books. Written by Else Holmelund Minarik, they are illustrated by Maurice Sendak, which is why Little Bear bears a slight resemblance to Max from Where the Wild Things Are. This book contains four short chapters involving Little Bear's interactions with some of his friends, especially a little girl he meets named Emily, and her doll Lucy.

3. I grew up reading the popular Berenstain Bears series, and this book is something of a spin-off from that, but Bears in the Night is worded simply for preschool-aged children, and is all about demonstrating prepositions. When a bunch of bears are sleeping in bed, they hear a "Whoo!" sound, and creep out the window to investigate. They also go around the lake, through some woods, and up a hill -- then quickly back through it all again when the owl hoots loudly at them!

4. Bear Snores On, by Karma Wilson, is an adorable story written in rhyme (with a consistent meter too - yay!), in which a party develops in bear's den while he sleeps winter away. One after another, his friends show up and begin cooking and making merry -- but as the title says, bear snores on. Young children might enjoy repeating the refrain as it comes up. A fun winter tale for preschoolers.

5. By the talented Stead couple, Bear Has a Story to Tell is a cute story of bear and his friends which, like the book above, involves hibernation. Bear has a story to tell his friends, but they are all busy getting ready for winter. So bear helps them. By the time spring comes, bear can't remember his story! Can his friends help him?

Wallpaper is a wordless story that's beautifully illustrated with paper collage art. It tells the tale of a young girl who has just moved into a new house, and is nervous about meeting the new children next door. Instead, she takes a journey into the wallpaper where she is chased by an odd yellow creature through several layers of amusingly decorated wallpaper before she realizes the monster just needs a friend. 

Her friendship with the imaginary creature helps give her the courage to say hello to some potential new friends in the real world. I appreciate seeing shyness covered in a children's book, and I also liked the interplay between fantasy and reality. The different "worlds" in the different layers of wallpaper were also well done. 

(Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.)

Scrounged From: NetGalley

Format: Kindle
Author/illustrator: Thao Lam
Pages: 32
Content Advisory: None

More Reviews at Amazon

I grew up with Dr. Seuss -- I remember my mom reading me The Cat in the Hat, and I spent plenty of time reading his books to siblings, and then to my own kids. I've probably got Hop on Pop memorized, and can do a pretty fast rendition of Fox in Socks by now. 

Coming up with my top 5 Dr. Seuss books was hard, but I did my best. Here they are, starting with 5:

5. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish is one of the "beginnger books" that I grew up with. But I don't believe we ever owned it, so I didn't come to know it forwards and backwards like some of the others -- I think that added to its appeal. This book is basically a celebration of weird creatures that Dr. Seuss has invented, explained by the tagline "From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere." It features such favorites as the Yink who drinks pink ink, the Zans for cans, the Yop who likes to hop, as well as other memorable inventions that remain unnamed.

4. The Lorax is one Dr. Seuss book that I didn't encounter until I was an adult. I'd heard of it, of course, since it was made into a movie, and knew it had something to do with trees, but that was about it. The story speaks fairly bluntly to our materialism and consumerism, and yet it doesn't feel overdone. Seuss knew how to make use of absurdity and hyperbole with just enough reality thrown in to drive his point home.

3. It's a common graduation gift, but Oh, the Places You'll Go! is another that I didn't read until adulthood. It's a celebration of freedom and potential, declaring "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose." It promotes self-determination, persistence, and courage, while also giving encouragement for the difficult, lonely, and confusing times of life (because they will come). I think it still has a lot to say to those of us who are long out of college, and in such creative, evocative, and sometimes absurd ways. 

2. I'm pretty sure Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? was the first Dr. Seuss book I ever personally owned, so it holds a special place in my heart. My copy is falling apart now, but I still don't have the heart to throw it in the recycling bin. It's full of wacky, absurd situations (some of them quite intricately illustrated) in which someone is stuck in a difficult position (though often humorously so), which is then used to point out that some people are "ever so muchly much much more unlucky than you." Some may see this as being dismissive, but I think this is far too silly and crazy to be taken that seriously. I think it was just a way for Dr. Seuss to make up a whole bunch of weird scenarios for the fun of it. I also never knew it was possible to feel bad for a coat hanger.

1. I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew is my all-time favorite Dr. Seuss book, hands down. It's the story of a... well... a Seussical creature who lives in a place where he's constantly getting attacked by other Seussical creatures with strange names. But then he hears the tale of a place called Solla Sollew, "where they never have troubles, at least very few." So off he goes in search of this Seussian utopia, but he finds the journey to be anything but easy. After many detours and setbacks, he finally arrives at his destination, and finds that there's only one tiny trouble -- but it prevents him from getting in. The message I took from the story is that you can't run away from your troubles -- in the end, he learns to face them. As a kid, while I appreciated the ending, it also gave me this sad feeling -- like, I really wanted to see what was inside Solla Sollew. It looked so amazing. It was like realizing utopia isn't real, which I guess is just the kind of let-down we all need at some point. But sometimes I would still have dreams about it, like the Seussical creature did -- what would it be like to fall asleep on a pile of marshmallow-stuffed pillows? Probably we don't have to invent utopia to find out.

Of course, there are others. I also really like How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (review here), Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!, and If I Ran the Circus!, among others. But I decided five was all I could try and rank for now -- more would be too difficult!

Like my previous "winter" post, 5 Picture Books for Winter, this sequel post focuses on some picture books that take place during wintertime -- featuring snow, chills, and even a large blizzard!

The title of Winter Is the Warmest Season, by Lauren Stringer, gave me pause when I first noticed it. Not being a huge winter fan myself, I decided I had to at least read it to see how this seeming contradiction could be true. Overall it's a nice exploration of all the ways in which winter becomes cozy and warm due to our efforts to counteract the chill. Full review here.

While Extra Yarn is not about winter per se, it takes place in a small village that is drawn in contrasting tones of black (soot) and white (snow). Annabelle's box of never-ending yarn helps to add lovely pastel-colored cheer to the otherwise dismal place. A charming story by Mac Barnett with beautiful illustrations by Jon Klassen -- full review here.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is one of my favorite Robert Frost poems, and one that I remember memorizing as a child. This book simply illustrates this classic poem, relating a man's decision to just stop and watch some woods "fill up with snow." Until he decides he must move on, because "I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep..." Illustrated by Susan Jeffers.

Snow is Cynthia Rylant's lyrical ode to snow in its many forms and uses, celebrating the way the world seems to slow down just a bit when those flakes start falling. It's illustrated by Lauren Stringer, who also wrote and illustrated Winter Is the Warmest Season, above. 

Blizzard is John Rocco's account of a giant blizzard he experienced as a boy growing up in Rhode Island. Forty inches of snow fell on his town, and after a few days of dwindling food supplies, John decided to find some snowshoes and make the journey to the store so his family could have milk in their cocoa again. This story does a good job of portraying a child's sense of adventure and curiosity during a new experience like this. Full review here.