book recommendations: for children and gardeners

I've been meaning to recommend a few children's books, but since I waited as long as I did I now have books for gardeners to recommend as well.

As seen in the above picture my son has been enjoying Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad are Friends. If you haven't read any of the Frog and Toad series you are missing out! They are funny. There is also a Mouse and Mole series written by Wong Herbet Yee which are written in the same spirit as Frog and Toad, and garner even more laughs from my young reader. Both series and authors (as they have written other books) are highly recommended.

This month I discovered a new blog. Well, new to me as it has been around for a number of years. It is call Chiot's Run and it is a diary of an organic gardener in Ohio. It has provided wonderful inspiration to me. One of the reason I enjoy blogs is to see how real people live in real time. I do realize pictures and content are edited, but blogs have the every day, slice-of-life factor that magazines and books do not. Any way, this blogger  provides many book recommendations two of which I have already checked out from the library: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and The Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman. Kingsolver's book accounts for her families journey of eating only locally and from their own farm for one year. It is full of information on the organic gardening movement, and provides a tangible account of finding local food resources for almost all of her family's needs. Coleman is a long-time small farm vegetable grower. The Winter Harvest Handbook describes growing vegetables so you have a year-round harvest. Currently, we harvest heavily in the Spring and Summer, minimally in the Fall. I'd like to expand the use of the garden and this book gave great insight in how to do just that. I highly recommend both books, if you are interested in such topics!

I can't leave out my daughter's recent reads! At the end of our schooling year she made her way through the Anne of Green Gables series and enjoyed it immensely, re-reading her favorite books again and again. (She's a quick reader!) She and I read together two books by Eleanor Estes: The Hundred Dresses and Ginger Pye.  The Hundred Dresses is the tale of a poor, young girl and her seemingly made-up tale of having one hundred dresses. In one short book it shows how children can be creative, unkind, and remorseful - good topics to review with my young daughter. Ginger Pye is a long read about two young children, a brother and sister, who purchase a dog, the dog is kidnapped, and then the dog is recovered. You might think I gave away the whole story, but this author goes on so many tangents I haven't told you half of it. If you don't like tangents, you won't like this story, but my daughter and I were highly amused.

So, although it is the season for mostly outdoor activities, in our down-time you might find us laying down with our noses in books, as my son exhibits so well in the above photo (and I didn't even have him pose!).

If you are currently reading something wonderful, I'd love to know.