Looking for gifts for the young gardeners on your list? Or maybe adding to your own garden book collection? Here are thirteen books that we think anyone would love to receive.
Picture Books
Wonder Walkers
by Micha Archer
Also available in Spanish!
When two curious kids embark on a “wonder walk,” they let their imaginations soar as they look at the world in a whole new light.
Awards: Caldecott Honor Award, Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Illustration
If You Plant a Seed
by Kadir Nelson
Also available in French!
If you plant a carrot seed, a carrot will grow. If you plant a cabbage seed, cabbage will grow. But what happens if you plant a seed of kindness or selfishness?
Nominations: NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Children’s, Goodreads Choice Awards Best Picture Books
Goodnight Veggies
by Diana Murray
Also available in Spanish!
Every veggie needs their shut-eye in this bedtime book that celebrates community, the joys of a small garden, and the importance of taking care of ourselves.
Before We Eat: From Farm to Table
by Pat Brisson
Before we eat, many people work very hard—planting grain, catching fish, tending farm animals, and filling crates of vegetables. This expanded edition includes back-of-book features about school gardens and the national farm-to-school movement.
Awards: Moonbeam Gold Award, Growing Good Kids Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature
Thank You, Garden
A community garden unites children and neighbors in this celebration of all the things that grow there, from flowers and fruits to friendships.
Awards: Moonbeam Gold Award, Growing Good Kids Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature
I Love Strawberries!
Jolie LOVES strawberries – and she’s on an unstoppable (and hilarious) mission to grow her own food from seedling to table in this colorful introduction to the joy of growing the popular perennial.
Uncle John’s City Garden
by Bernette G. Ford
How does this city garden grow? With help from L’il Sissy and her siblings–and love, love, love! It’s the magic of nature in the heart of the city.
Accolades: A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
Behold our Magical Garden
Poems Fresh from a School Garden
by Allan Wolf
There’s a lot more to gardens than meets the eye! In this collection of buoyant poems filled with fun facts, young nature enthusiasts and budding gardeners are called on to help solve a mystery by the compost bin, join a Wild West–style standoff between some good bugs and a few bad ones, interview the sun to find out what happens when it drinks a glass of water, and more.
Our School Garden!by Rick Swann
by Rick Swann
New city. New school. Michael is feeling all alone—until he discovers the school garden! There’re so many ways to learn, and so much work to do. Each season creates a new way to learn, explore, discover and make friends.
Awards: Growing Good Kids Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature
Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt
by Kate Messner
Up in the garden, the world is full of green—leaves and sprouts, growing vegetables, ripening fruit. But down in the dirt there is a busy world of earthworms digging, snakes hunting, skunks burrowing, and all the other animals that make a garden their home.
Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults
by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Adapted by Monique Gray Smith
Adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith, this new edition of Indigenous scientist and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s best-selling book reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest teachers: the plants around us. With informative sidebars, reflection questions, and art from illustrator Nicole Neidhardt, Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults brings Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation.
The Year Money Grew on Trees
by Aaron Hawkins
With frostbitten fingers, sleepless nights, and sore muscles, fourteen-year-old Jackson Jones and his posse of cousins discover the lost art of winging it when they take over an orchard of three hundred wild apple trees. They know nothing about pruning or irrigation or pest control, but if they are to avoid losing the $8,000 they owe on an unfair contract with their neighbor, Mrs. Nelson, they just have to figure it out.
The Secret Garden on 81st Street
Mary Lennox is a loner living in Silicon Valley. When her parents pass away in a tragic accident, she moves to New York City to live with her uncle who she barely knows. Looking for comfort in this strange, new reality, Mary discovers an abandoned rooftop garden and an even bigger secret…her cousin who suffers from anxiety. With the help of her new friends, Colin and Dickon, Mary works to restore the garden to its former glory while also learning to grieve, build real friendships, and grow.
