Tag: frances hodgson burnett (page 1 of 1)

10 Books That Celebrate Spring

Some years February is mopey and melancholic. It mists the back of my neck with gray rain, and the clouds seem so low, so immovable that I’m tempted to reach up and try to touch them. But this year, I detected a decided tone of mockery in February’s weather: it snowed, and then the snow turned to gray slush and then it went away. The sun came out for a week or so then, warm enough for walking and wondering at crocuses and snowdrops and feeling hopeful about life in general.

And then the snow came back.

It was white and fluffy snow, the kind of snow we’re glad to see in November. But I caught myself shaking my fist at it and wanting to retreat into some inner part of me that remembered crocuses and snowdrops and the promising first shoots of daffodils. Instead, I dug out the picture books.

Normally, I like to fill the weeks of Lent with posts about beautiful Easter books. But this year I decided to start with a list of books about spring, when the whole earth (well, this hemisphere of it) resurrects, and new life buds and blooms in every corner.

10 Books That Celebrate Spring | Little Book, Big Story

You can find a list of my favorite traditional Easter stories here, and I’ll post more in the weeks to come. But today, we’re doing something a little different, something that looks at the new life promised in those crocuses and birds’ eggs.

These are books—many of them poetry—that make you want to go outside and wonder at the world contained within a droplet of water. They are books that till the soil within us so we are ready to consider the breaking up, sowing, and bursting forth that is Easter.


And Then it’s Spring, by Julie Fogliano

This sweet book echoes exactly my impatience right now. “First you have brown, all around you have brown . . . “. But Then It’s Spring reads like a poem—but a charming poem, not a chanty one. And Erin Stead illustrates it with all the warmth and beauty of A Sick Day for Amos McGee (one of our favorites).


Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature, by Nicola Davies

This “First Book of Nature” is full of poems that span the entire year, but we’ve been reading through the spring section for now, savoring Davies’ meditations on cherry blossoms and birds’ nests. The book is big, with gorgeous collage illustrations, bright colors, and text that celebrates the small beauties around us.


The Creation Story, by Norman Messenger

The Creation Story | Little Book, Big Story

It is good to remember where all those plants begin, and wonderful to consider that they all spring from the ones spoken into being by God. Norman Messenger’s illustrations are filled with detail and life and do this first story justice. (Read the full review.)


All the Small Poems and Fourteen More, by Valerie Worth

All the Small Poems, by Valerie Worth | Little Book, Big Story

These short poems are not only about spring, but they rest briefly on many spring-related topics, like flowers and small creatures and rain . Worth’s poems are a delight to read together, and remind us of the wonder tucked into some of the most ordinary aspects of our lives. (Read the full review.)


A Seed is Sleepyby Dianna Hutts Aston

A Seed is Sleepy, by Dianna Hutts Aston | Little Book, Big Story

A Seed is Sleepy is one of a series of books on interesting aspects of nature. Sylvia Long’s illustrations are richly detailed and show the beauty and variety of the seeds that house strange flowers and plants from all around the world. This book is a beautiful reminder that though they don’t seem to be doing much right now, there are sleepy seeds laboring all around us right now.


The Complete Book of Flower Fairies, by Cicely Mary Barker

The Complete Book of Flower Fairies, by Cicely Mary Barker | Little Book, Big Story

These poems aren’t only about spring either—in fact, they go through a year’s worth of flowers—but spring means flowers and poetry to me, and these are the best flower poems I know. Cicely Mary Barker assigns each flower a corresponding fairy, then writes about that fairy’s quirks and temperament in a way that makes the poems easy to memorize and the flowers easy to recognize in the wild. Some of the newer collections of Flower Fairies add gimmicks like stories and crafts, but this one is just the poems, arranged by season, and Barker’s classic illustrations.


The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett | Little Book, Big Story

Lydia and I are reading this one together right now, and the image of those little green shoots peeping through the tangle of forgotten rose vines is enough to make my spring-hungry heart happy. A beautiful classic, and one that deserves its own post here on the blog.


A Child’s Calendar, by John Updike

A Child's Calendar, by John Updike | Little Book, Big Story

Okay, so this book isn’t only about spring either, but it does fit spring within its context and I love that. John Updike wrote a poem for every month of the year, and Trina Schart Hyman’s illustrations follow one family through all four seasons, poem by poem. It’s a wonderful book, and the poem “April” contains one of my favorite lines about spring anywhere: “The blushing, girlish world unfolds.” If that doesn’t describe spring, what does?


The Reason for a Flower, by Ruth Heller

Once at a Young Author’s Conference, I heard Ruth Heller speak about illustrating children’s books. I liked her then, but I love her now—her detailed drawings and unexpected rhymes are just what subjects like grammar and botany need.


Anything by L. M. Montgomery

LM Montgomery | Little Book, Big Story

L. M. Montgomery’s books are worth reading at any time of the year. But there’s something about spring that makes me want to read and re-read her work, preferably on the front porch, where I can smell freshly tilled garden plots and see as many flowers as possible. (Read more about L. M. Montgomery.)


And A Bonus One, Just for You:

Humble Roots, by Hannah Anderson

Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes the Soul, by Hannah Anderson | Little Book, Big Story

Imagine that Animal, Vegetable, Miracle had been written by Elisabeth Elliot, and you’ll have some idea what to expect from this book. But even so Humble Roots will probably surprise you. Hannah Anderson mediates on the topic of humility, weaving in stories from her life in rural Virginia as well as a vignette about a different flower or plant for each chapter. This is already one of the best books I’ve read this year.


An Aside

Have you had a chance to check out the new Book List? You can find it here, or you can learn more about it in this post.

A Little Princess

I love adventure stories. I love swashbuckling stories, and tales of the under dog, fighting against the odds. I love Treasure IslandRobinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson. I really do.

And yet, I can’t help but notice that my blog is heavy on books with interesting heroines, nestled into the sort of stories that do more to warm the heart than get the blood pumping. But that’s just life with small daughters, I suppose (especially when the eldest of the clan* is a sensitive soul with a love of language, old-fashioned things and characters with rich inner lives).

A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett | Little Book, Big Story

Rest assured, I do intend to broaden their horizons with all of the books listed above—eventually. For now, we’re content with Laura and Heidi and Sara Crewe, heroine of the classic book, A Little Princess.

Sara is a singular character: though wealthy and doted upon, she is not spoiled and does not consider herself set apart from the other students at her boarding school, despite the fact that the headmistress singles her out for display as a “model student” whenever visitors come to the school. But when the death of her darling father leaves her penniless and without a guardian, Sara suffers a dramatic fall in fortunes. The question at the heart of this book is one put to her by the snobbish Lavinia, who disparages the gift for storytelling and “supposing” that draw the other girls to Sara:

“It’s all very well to suppose things if you have everything,” said Lavinia. “Could you suppose and pretend things if you were a beggar and lived in a garret?”

Sara . . . looked thoughtful. “I believe I could,” she said. “If one was a beggar, one would have to suppose and pretend all the time. But it mightn’t be easy.”

This is a book rich in virtue, because—unlike the heroine of Hodgson’s better-known book, The Secret Garden—Sara is an admirable character from start to finish. Though not a literal princess, she is the sort of heroine that we are glad for our daughters to know.

A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett | Little Book, Big Story

A Little Princess
Frances Hodgson Burnett (1905)


A Little Princess | Little Book, Big STory

*This is a special edition post because “the eldest of our clan,” Lydia, turns six this weekend. Shocking! This will be an especially literary birthday for her, as her gifts from us are all book related: a copy of The Lost Princess by George MacDonald, as well as The Complete Flower Fairies, by Cicely Barker. To top off the literariness, Sarah and I framed the cover of an old copy of The Princess and the Goblin for Lydia to hang in her corner of their shared room (the love of that girl for Irene and Curdie knows no bounds).