Books to Swing into Spring With...

This post is part of a series of monthly blog posts by Ottawa Public Library children’s librarians! We hope you enjoy today’s post and remember to check back every month for great children’s books ideas. Get your children into the swing of spring with a visit to your local library.  The following books from the Ottawa Public Library are sure to get the whole family excited about the change of the seasons.

Stimulate your child’s senses this spring with touch and feel books.  Spring is appropriate for babies and introduces vocabulary for the season.  From blossom and flower to fawn and lamb, your baby will love the colourful pictures and playing with the textures.   

After you’ve seen the cute bunny and felt its fuzzy nose, you’ll have to pick up I love bunnies.  From the same series, this touch and feel book offers simple rhymes to describe the fluffy and bouncy quality of bunnies.  With sparkly flowers and a felt carrot, this book offers as much to touch, as it does to look at it.  

*Both Spring and I love bunnies are part of OPL’s English board book collection.  Board books cannot be requested through the library’s hold system but every branch and the bookmobile offer a wide selection.  They are a great way to introduce books to your babies without having to worry about ripping pages.  Go into your local branch to find these two titles and see what else is available!

With the cold days of winter behind us, it’s time for Wake Up, It’s Spring! by Lisa Campbell Ernst.  This story will take you and your child on a journey through the rebirth of the earth and its inhabitants as the days get warmer and longer.  One by one, things start to wake up.  By the end, both you and your child will be wide awake and celebrating the days of spring!

As the season changes, your child can finally shed the layers that were needed to keep them warm all winter.  Welcome the transition from winter to spring with It’s Spring! By Linda Glaser.  The text is accompanied by beautiful images of gushing streams and flowers, plants and trees created by cut-paper illustrations by Susan Swan.  Through Glaser’s story and Swan’s illustrations, you and your child will be able to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste the changes of the season!

One of the wonders of spring is getting outside and into the garden.  Include your child in this process with Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert.  It is the colourful story of the plants and flowers one child and mother team plant in the garden.  Discover red tulips, orange tiger lilies, yellow daffodils, green ferns, blue morning glories, and purple violets for a bouquet that includes all the colours of the rainbow!

Take a closer look at the life span of a flower with Eric Carle’s The Tiny Seed. Your child will learn about the cycle in a garden as a seed germinates and turns into a plant, blooms and goes to seed.  Carle’s bright artwork is sure to captivate your little one.