Recommendations for Kids

Browse our regularly updated lists of staff picks, bestsellers, reading recommendations by grade, award winners, and more.

(Want personalized recommendations? Use our Kids Book Picks form for suggested reads from our librarians.)

Planting Seeds and Growing Gardens

Plant the Tiny Seed

Beautiful collage-and-watercolor art follows the seed through its entire life cycle, as it grows into a zinnia in a garden full of buzzing bees, curious hummingbirds, and colorful butterflies. Children engage with the book as they wiggle their fingers to water the seeds, clap to make the sun shine after rain, and shoo away a hungry snail. Appropriate for even the youngest child, Plant the Tiny Seed is never the same book twice—no matter how many times you read it!

And for curious young nature lovers, a page of facts about seeds, flowers, and the insects and animals featured in the book is included at the end. Fans of Press Here, Eric Carle, and Lois Ehlert will find their next favorite book in Plant the Tiny Seed.
Are You a Cheeseburger?

Laugh-out-loud humor and a tender friendship blossom in author-illustrator Monica Arnaldo's charming picture book about a lonely raccoon and a glowing seed, and the world's most important question: Can this seed grow cheeseburgers?

Grub is a lonely racoon. Rumbling in the trash. Looking for food.

Seed is, well, a seed! Patiently waiting in the trash. Hoping someone will plant it.

When the two finally meet, they realize they might be able to help each other! Grub has just one big question first: What will Seed grow? Could Seed grow Grub's favorite food, mouthwatering cheeseburgers? Seed isn't sure what a cheeseburger is exactly, but . . . maybe!

And so begins a hilarious friendship following two unlikely strangers learning more about the other and discovering the pressure that comes with fulfilling expectations. Author-illustrator Monica Arnaldo will leave readers giggling and clamoring for more in this charming story that celebrates the unexpected--and how the most special friendships bloom only when we are unapologetically ourselves.
Lola Plants a Garden

How does your garden grow? Book-loving Lola is inspired by a collection of garden poems that she reads with her mommy. She wants to plant her own garden of beautiful flowers, so she and Mommy go to the library to check out books about gardening. They choose their flowers and buy their seeds. They dig and plant. And then they wait. Lola finds it hard to wait for her flowers to grow, but she spends the time creating her own flower book. Soon she has a garden full of sunflowers and invites all of her friends for cakes and punch and a story amongst the flowers.
What Will Grow?

Seeds can be big or small, round or pointy, and all sorts of colors. They can become flowers, trees, fruits, or vegetables, and they sprout all times of year, during spring, summer, fall, and winter.

But all seeds have one thing in common--inside each is a new plant life waiting to emerge. What kind of plant will bloom? Wait and see what will grow!

Including four gorgeous pull-out gatefolds, this lyrical and stunningly illustrated book includes fun facts about starting a garden.
To Be Like the Sun

Within every tiny seed lies the secret of what's to come. First a shoot, then a stem, a leaf, a bud--and finally a brilliant sunflower reaching high for the sun. Join a young girl as she waters and watches, celebrating the everyday miracles of growth and life.
Plant a Little Seed

With a little help from a watering can, bright sunlight, and a lot of patience, two friends plant seeds in their community garden and watch how they grow. Slowly, the seeds turn into sprouts, which grow into stems, followed by leaves and buds! The garden will soon be teeming with life and ready for a harvest season celebration. But until then, the children water and wait and dream . . .
Sprout, Seed, Sprout!

One day, when a boy sees his dad cut an avocado in half, he decides to plant the fruit's seed and grow it into...an avocado tree! One glass of water, two careful hands, and three pointy toothpicks later, it's time to wait...and wait...and wait...for it to grow.

At long last, the boy and his faithful pet cat see one root, two roots, three roots emerge! Three scoops of soil, three sprinkles of water, and a lot more waiting...lead to one sturdy stem, two clapping hands, and three grateful cheers. The avocado tree starts to appear! One, two, and three years later, the tree grows taller still.

This charming story is told with lots of rhythm and repetition, paired with playful illustrations full of funny details about the trials of coaxing a seed into a plant. Readers will come away with a sense that the struggle to be patient and stick it out can be worthwhile, even when a result seems impossible.
A Seed Is Sleepy

Award-winning artist Sylvia Long and author Dianna Hutts Aston have teamed up again to create this gorgeous and informative introduction to seeds. Poetic in voice and elegant in design, the book introduces children to a fascinating array of seed and plant facts, making it a guide that is equally at home being read on a parent's lap as in a classroom reading circle.
If You Plant a Seed

Kadir Nelson, acclaimed author of Baby Bear and winner of the Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King Author and Illustrator Awards, presents a resonant, gently humorous story about the power of even the smallest acts and the rewards of compassion and generosity.

With spare text and breathtaking oil paintings, If You Plant a Seed demonstrates not only the process of planting and growing for young children but also how a seed of kindness can bear sweet fruit.
It Starts With A Seed

In gentle rhyme, It Starts with a Seed evocatively explores the growth of a tiny sycamore seed.

Taking a journey through the seasons and years, we follow the seed as it transforms from a seedling to a sapling, then a young tree, until it becomes a large tree with its branches and roots filling the page. As the tree grows, it is joined by well-loved woodland creatures - squirrels and rabbits, butterflies and owls - who make it their home. Beautiful and evocative, It Starts with a Seed is a factual story that will touch children with its simple but enchanting message of life and growth.

Beautifully presented, It Starts with a Seed has a gold embossed front cover, gatefolds, textured paper and specialised etching technique, hand made by the illustrator throughout.

It Starts with a Seed was the winner of the inaugural Margaret Mallett Award for Children's Non-Fiction.
Planting Seeds

Combines cut-paper artwork and simple, rhyming text in an introduction to gardening that follows the efforts of little bunnies who plant and grow carrots while counting from one to 10.
Ten Seeds

The perfect counting book for young nature-lovers

If you plant 10 seeds, what do you get? Follow nature's wonderful cycle in this engaging counting book with a difference! Rounded corners and card pages make this picture book perfect for young children.
Bloom

Dig holes in the autumn soil.
Drop the bulbs in one by one.
Cover them with dirt.
Come spring, the bulbs will flower!

In this lushly illustrated story from Deborah Diesen that celebrates life and growing up, a mother and daughter plant a garden to see how something small blooms into something as beautiful and strong as their love.

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Lists

NYT Best Sellers

Get Reading for

Illinois Kids Book Awards

Monarch (Grades K-3) (PDF)
Bluestem (Grades 3-5) (PDF)
Caudill (Grades 4-8) (PDF)

National Kids Book Awards