Picture Books for Growing Minds
Home is Calling:
The Journey of the Monarch Butterfly
SCBWI Charlotte and Wilbur Award for Compassion for Animals Award
Growing Good Kids Book Award
2024 NCTE Notable Children's Book in the Language Arts Award
Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List
Join the monarchs as they embark on a transcontinental journey home in this moving story about migration.
As the sun dawns in Canada, a flutter of monarch butterflies take flight, ready to begin their months-long journey to their ancestral home in Mexico. The migration will not be easy, but it is necessary for the next generation of monarchs to be born. Brought to life with illustrations as vivid as the monarch’s iconic orange and black hues, this story invites young readers to experience the monarch’s migration from the butterflies’ point of view as they search for food, huddle together through storms, and tirelessly fly south.
Parents and educators alike will find much to love about this poetically written book. The story touches on how climate change and deforestation are impacting monarchs, and kid-friendly back matter provides additional information about the butterflies, including their life cycle, anatomy, and migratory patterns, as well as several simple ways children can help monarch butterflies themselves.
Praise for Home is Calling:
Spring Is For Strawberries
When a farm family brings their spring crops to a city farmers market, the farmers’ daughter befriends the daughter of a neighborhood family doing their weekly shopping. Over the course of a year, the girls explore the bounty of each season. Sweet spring strawberries and crisp, fresh greens make way for corn on the cob, peppers, and a rainbow of tomatoes. Fall brings pumpkin patches and the crunch of apples. The friends part at the final winter market, already looking forward to the sweet red strawberries that will unite them again next spring.
Katherine Pryor’s lyrical celebration of seasonal local foods is brought to life by Polina Gortman’s portrait of a growing friendship between two children from seemingly different worlds. Spring Is For Strawberries reminds us to seek pleasure in the changing harvests around us, and that all things—even friendships—have seasons worth waiting for.
Praise for Spring Is For Strawberries:
Bea's Bees
Beatrix discovers a wild bumblebee nest on her way home from school and finds herself drawn to their busy world. When her bees mysteriously disappear, Bea hatches a plan to bring them back. Can Bea inspire her school and community to save the bees?
Author Katherine Pryor and illustrator Ellie Peterson have created a hopeful tale of persistence and resilience to inspire future conservationists. A perfect companion to home or school pollinator gardens, Bea's Bees encourages kids to help protect bees and other pollinators.
Praise for Bea's Bees:
Zora's Zucchini
Winner: 2016 Growing Good Kids Book Award
The first zucchini of a summer garden is always exciting, but what happens when the plants just keep growing...and growing...and growing? Zora soon finds herself with more zucchini than her family can bake, sauté, or barbecue. Fortunately the ever-resourceful girl comes up with the perfect plan—a garden swap!
Author Katherine Pryor and artist Anna Raff tell the playful story of a child who discovers the wonder of growing food and the joy of growing a community.
Available in Spanish and as an audio book.
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Praise for Zora's Zucchini:
Sylvia's Spinach
Over 100,000 copies in print!
Sylvia Spivens always said 'no' to spinach. But one day, Sylvia's teacher gives her a packet of spinach seeds to plant for a school garden. In the garden, Sylvia discovers the joy of growing food from the ground up and the pleasure of trying something new.
Parents will identify with the challenge of feeding healthy food to a picky eater, and educators will understand the magic and rewards of school gardens. Best of all, young readers will celebrate Sylvia's strong will, curiosity, and, maybe, her love of spinach.
Available in Spanish and as an audiobook.
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