Books x3 – The Garden: Planting a Rainbow, Up, Down, and Around & “The Apple & The Butterfly”

I have three lovely garden books for you this week. There are so many wonderful garden books out there, that it was really hard to choose. I hope these are a reasonably good selection! Ones that appeal to different age groups – the last one especially appealing to mummies and daddies that love a bit of “good graphic design”, as well as older kids (even up to 10-12yrs?). 

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Let’s begin!

Up, Down And Around, by Kathryn Ayres. The first thing that caught Red Ted’s (2.5yrs) attention is all the detail. He loves all the little bugs and bunnies and snails on every page and loves finding them. He chose this book himself (when presented with a choice). It is fun, bright and colourful. I don’t think it is the “best” how do plants grow book, but then I am not sure what a “best book” for this age group would look like. It does show the sowing of seeds and the needing to water and then it focuses on how things grow (up or down etc) – so it definitely has the basics and I think it is great for Red Ted to understand that you can’t always see a vegetable growing – but that sometimes they are underground (we enjoyed talking about potatoes in particularly!). It ends wonderfully with a wonderful vegetable picnic – salad, soup, pie. Yummy. We like at the Red Ted household!

Planting a Rainbow, by Lois Ehlert. I actually bought this book for Red Ted (2.5yrs) as I thought it would be a great addition to our Rainbow Week last week (see our fabulously scrummy Rainbow Cookies that have been causing a stir!), but upon receiving it, found it a wonderful garden book too. Fabulous – two in one! I think it is beautifully illustrated. It tells us about bulbs and seeds. About autumn (bulb planting) and spring (seed planting), about letting some seedlings from the garden centre – in other words things that mummy (me) actually does! We also learn the name of lots of beautiful garden flowers and plants. It then goes into watching everything grow and the beautiful rainbow appearing. Very simple. Very pretty.

La mela e la farfalla (The Apple and the Butterfly) – A book without words- by Iela und Enzo Mari. (I have the “German” version, but the German bit is really just the title…). I love this book. It has no words. So it really encourages  the reader to engage with the drawings and make up a little story as you go along – a perfect aid and practice for storytelling if you are feeling a little rusty. (Check out my post about the importance of story telling here!). It starts off with a little caterpillar that grows in a beautiful red apple and how with time it grows into a butterfly that lays an egg in an apple blossom. The blossom turns into an apple and the cycle begins again! PS the focus IS on the caterpillar and butterfly developing, so a little cheat in that it doesn’t purely focus on how the apple grows.. but I thought it was a worthy cheat!).