Environmental Book Club

Copy provided by NetGalley

Publication Date: May 3, 2022

A World Full of Nature Stories 50 Folktales and Legends  by Angela McAllister with illustrations by Hannah Bess Ross is a lovely collection of folktales and legends from around the world that, as the title says, feature nature. They are often creation stories relating to some natural feature or event. Arguably they are not nature stories so much as they are stories trying to explain nature from the standpoint of people who had no understanding of natural science. 

What makes them attractive for American readers, in particular, is that many of them are unfamiliar to us. They are new and novel. At the same time, though, it appears that foolish kings and jealous, nasty siblings are common all over the world, as are the rewards of good character.

As a child, I was a fan of a couple of books of short pieces to be read over a long period of time. For that reason, I can see A World Full of Nature Stories getting a lot of use in a home library. Elementary and middle school librarians in schools with units on folk tales and legends or foreign countries should really consider this, too. 

I read an e-arc but what I saw suggests that, in addition to its fine content, this is a beautiful looking book.

Environmental Book Club

Copy provided by NetGalley

Publication Oct. 12, 2021?

According to NetGalley, Busy Spring, Nature Wakes Up by Sean Taylor and Alex Morss with illustrations by Cinyee Chiu publishes the week after next. However, looking around on-line, including at the publisher's website, it appears to have come out this past March. That makes a great deal more sense, a spring book publishing in the spring, not in the fall.

Whenever it became available, Busy Spring is an excellent selection for our Environmental Book Club. It's a beautifully illustrated story about a boy and girl who go out to work in the garden with their father, just because it is spring. They ramble about, doing a number of things in the yard, while Dad explains various things in a nonscientific way. "The spring sunlight is nature's alarm clock. Life's waking up. Plants are racing to get more light." A better than adequate explanation for young readers of what's happening in springtime.

The illustrations and layout of this book reminded me of The Ox-cart Man by Donald Hall with Caldecott Medal winning illustrations by Barbara Cooney.  Both books also deal with nature, by way of the changing seasons. Ox-cart Man is about what the ox-cart man does over the course of the year, while Busy Spring is about what a family does in spring time.

Busy Spring has several pages of back matter, including a lengthier poetic explanation of spring and then a section on what is going on with plants and animals at that time. But, really, the main text about the family working together is enough. 

Taylor, Morss, and Chiu have an earlier book, Winter Sleep, A Hibernation Story.

Environmental Book Club

I discovered April Pulley Sayre last winter. She uses photography to illustrate her writing. Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe her photography inspires her writing.

Full of Fall  combines stunning photography with spare, expressive, poetic writing.


This spring I became interested...just a bit, to be truthful...in nature poetry. That's what Sayre's Best in Snow is. Nature poetry for children with some more fantastic nature photography. I wouldn't have thought I would like the photography as much as I did.