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Author Richard Louv’s 2005 book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder shifted my entire teaching paradigm. As classrooms continue to move toward technology-based learning, Louv’s nature-deficit disorder continues to explain why children no longer enjoy spending time outside. “If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature,” he writes. For 80 percent of children living in urban areas, exposure to nature is often overlooked or limited. In these three picture books, distinct urban settings and unique storylines remind city-dwelling children that there is beauty and purpose to be found in interacting with the natural world. 

When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree by Jamie L.B. Deenihan and Lorraine Rocha 

What do you do when your birthday wish-list reads, “robot dog, drone, computer, phone, remote control car, and headphones,” but Grandma shows up with a lemon tree? In Jamie L.B. Deenihan’s picture book, the little girl’s initial disappointment is palpable. After reading a few care instructions for the tree, the girl begins to take an interest. Bright illustrations from Lorraine Rocha show the young girl nurturing the tree throughout the course of a year. Finally, the “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” adage is made literal as the girl finds great joy in setting up a lemonade stand outside of her urban apartment building. In a twist ending, her lemonade stand profits are used to purchase more plants which add color and beauty around her apartment building. The celebration of community and nature, spunky set of characters and colorful illustrations make for a cheery read-aloud that shows students the gratification that follows patience and hard work. 

• Classroom Lemon Tree—As a class, research lemon trees. Show students how to use climate and growing zone maps to determine if a lemon tree can survive in your area. (The answer is yes, lemon trees can be grown anywhere in the country.) Hold a discussion about the things the class needs in order to get a classroom lemon tree. Make a list of the students’ questions and then allow time for individual research. Knowing how to research for the purpose of answering questions is a valuable skill. These two lemon tree sites were informative and perfect for my second and third graders. Invite students to use their lemon tree research to write a letter explaining why the class needs a lemon tree and their plans for taking care of it.
• Entrepreneurship—An old-fashioned lemonade stand is a crash course in economics and marketing. With your students, discuss the concepts of advertising, supply and demand, capital resources and profit margins. Lemonade in Winter by Emily Jenkins and G. Brian Karas is an excellent read-aloud for budding entrepreneurs. Have students decide on a good or service to “sell” to their classmates. Spend a few weeks guiding students as they make a marketing plan (including a brand name and logo) and create a budget. After the planning is complete, celebrate their work with a Class Market Day. 
• Further Reading—Create an entire unit by reading more books that celebrate children bringing beauty to an urban community. Write the question, “How Can We Bring Beauty to Our Neighborhood?” on the board. Tell students that over the next three weeks, they will be hearing stories of children who improve their community. Read The Gardener by Sarah Stewart and David Small, Maybe Something Beautiful by F. Isobel, Teresa Howell and Rafael López, The Curious Garden by Peter Brown, A Bus Called Heaven by Bob Graham and City Green by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan. These stories have young protagonists who see a need in their urban neighborhood community, create a plan and take action. After reading each book, record students’ own community improvement ideas. 

The Chickens Are Coming! by Barbara Samuels 

Siblings Winston and Sophie live in a big city apartment building with a small backyard. Walking home one day, they spot a lamppost sign advertising five hens. “You don’t need to live in the country to raise chickens,” their Mommy declares. Just a few days later, “THE CHICKENS ARE HERE!” Initially, the chickens and children are unsure of each other. Sophie and Winston are worried when the chickens don’t immediately lay eggs, and their various attempts to persuade them into laying eggs (performing a skit about Easter eggs, playing music, reading them a bedtime story) are unsuccessful. However, the children soon learn the habits and personalities of their unconventional family pets. Based on real families who raise chickens in Brooklyn, Samuels’ lively story and expressive illustrations celebrate the possibility of bringing a small piece of the country to the city. 

• Hatch a Plan—In her author’s note, Samuels, a New York City resident, shares that chickens are the “cheapest and easiest farm animals to raise in a backyard.” Tell students to pretend that grocery stores have decided to stop selling eggs and so their family (or your classroom) will need to start raising chickens. They will need to decide which breed is best for their needs and neighborhood. Ask them questions: How many chickens? What type of cage is best? What will they feed their chickens? What type of eggs will their chickens lay? How much of a starting budget will be needed? Students are extra motivated when presented with projects that connect to the real-world. Create guidelines for final presentations and invite students to create visuals with photographs and their gathered information. Backyard Chicken Project and Backyard Chickens have a wealth of information for budding urban farmers. 
• Animal Breed Chart—On the back endpapers is “Sophie’s Chicken Chart,” a five-column chart with information about each chicken’s breed, weight, country of origin and egg size/color. Let children choose an animal (dogs, horses, cats, lizards, etc.) and create a similar breed comparison chart.  

Noah Builds an Ark by Kate Banks and John Rocco 

In this nonreligious retelling of the story of Noah’s Ark, a young boy named Noah peeks over his backyard fence toward the city and sees a storm on the horizon. “It’s going to be a beauty,” his dad says as he boards up the windows on the house. But Noah looks at the creatures in their garden and devises his own plan. Using his tool caddy and planks of wood, Noah repurposes his old red wagon and makes it into a makeshift ark. While his mother and sister fill water jugs and gather candles for the family, Noah furnishes the ark with food and furniture. The storm arrives, and it rains for four days. Noah and his family stay safe in the house while the animals ride out the storm in the lovingly prepared ark. When the storm passes, the animals exit the ark into the backyard which is framed by a rainbow. With attention to “the least of these” at its heart, Noah Builds an Ark gently reminds children that they, too, have the responsibility and privilege to care for the natural world. 

• Natural Disaster Preparation—Ask students what type of storm they think is coming to Noah’s city. Create a list of other natural disasters that can occur (hurricane, tornado, floods, forest fires, etc.), and then select three that are most relevant for your geographic area. Spend time reading books and learning about these natural disasters. After studying each one, help students create “I’m Ready” books. Give students fact sheets with the information the class learned in your research. Visit “Be Prepared” websites that explain how to prepare for these natural disasters. Invite a member of the local Red Cross chapter to come speak to your class. Students will record ways to prepare for natural disasters as well as family emergency plans and information. Providing information and guidance can help ease children’s fears as well as give them a strong emergency preparedness foundation. 
• Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt—Noah Builds an Ark is filled with vivid vocabulary. As a class, go on a vocabulary scavenger hunt. Identify the words that help readers visualize and understand the mood of the story. “Dreary,” “drizzling,” and “popped” are all words that create pictures in our minds. Discuss the meaning of the words. Then, encourage students to look through their independent reading books to find more vocabulary words. After the scavenger hunt is complete, students can share one of their favorite found words with the class. Chart these words and challenge students to use one of the words in their own writing.

People of all ages are fascinated with outer space and the largely unexplored frontier it is, but children are especially curious about the mysteries the universe holds. Two new picture books capture this wonder, and both stories are, in more ways than one, out of this world.

The smart twist at the end of author-illustrator Tom Sullivan’s Out There relies entirely upon his use of silhouette throughout the book. On the first spread, readers see what they assume are human children here on Earth—we see them from behind, shadows pointing up at a starlit sky—wondering if extraterrestrials exist in the universe. We see what we assume is an owl in a nearby tree. We also see the shadows of waving, alien-esque tentacles, but we figure they’re a figment of the children’s imagination; they are, after all, wondering about aliens. Before the big reveal, the children ponder what an alien planet may look like. “It could be filled with the strangest creatures,” Sullivan writes; the creatures pictured on the next page are all from Earth, albeit some of the most bizarre ones that exist (a blobfish, a flapjack octopus).

But at the book’s close, the children’s backs no longer toward us, we see that they themselves are the aliens, complete with green skin. We’ve been on another planet this whole time. What we thought was an owl in the tree were two alien creatures standing atop one another. And those tentacles are, well, actual tentacles! Out There is a book that reminds us of our humanity by revealing our own alienness from another perspective. And it reminds us that our planet—the bizarre, beautiful world we call home—is one worth taking care of.

Move over, Ms. Frizzle. In John Hare’s wordless picture book debut, Field Trip to the Moon, students hop on a lunar bus and take off into the darkness of outer space. Clad in astronaut suits, they land on the moon and follow their teacher on the surface, exploring and learning. One child who carries a sketchbook and crayons is always falling behind the class, and when they stop to do a drawing of Earth from the moon, they fall asleep. After waking just in time to see the school’s lunar bus depart, the dejected child sits and (what else is there to do?) draws some more.

When ashen-faced, one-eyed lunar creatures quite literally pop up out of the moon’s surface, they delight in watching the small human draw. Upon discovering them, the child shares their crayons and paper, and the whole group draws on the surface of a lunar rock nearby. When the bus finally returns, the alien creatures flee, and the happy, relieved teacher hugs the child, but the teacher is quick to scold the student for doodling on the surface of the moon.

Hare’s acrylic illustrations, occasionally divided into vertical panels to accelerate the action, are textured and expressive. He communicates emotion effectively via body language, given that this is a wordless tale and that all the humans characters are concealed in space helmets. It’s not until the last page that we see the protagonist without a helmet, and with medium-length, shaggy brown hair, it could be a boy or girl. This is a field trip that won’t soon be forgotten.

Julie Danielson conducts interviews and features of authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children's literature blog primarily focused on illustration and picture books.

Vincent van Gogh famously said that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day. Two new picture books about imaginative nighttime adventures prove the validity of this claim.

If it wasn’t already clear from award-winning team Philip and Erin Stead’s previous books, Music for Mister Moon demonstrates that these two really get introverts. In the first pages, we meet a cello-playing girl named Harriet Henry with long bangs hanging in her eyes. She loves playing her instrument, but only for her stuffed animals. She’d rather not play for crowds, thanks very much.

One night she strikes up a conversation with the moon after inadvertently knocking him from the sky with a teacup she throws in frustration at a loud owl. Mister Moon sometimes tires of being the moon and would like, for once, to float on a lake. With great determination, as well as the help of some friends (including the owl with whom she makes amends), Harriet makes that wish come true. After hauling the moon back up to the sky, Harriet plays her music for “no one but Mister Moon.”

With monoprint illustrations done in oil inks, along with additional flourishes in colored pencil, illustrator Erin Stead subtly anthropomorphizes the moon and creates exquisitely expressive characters and indelible images, like Harriet pulling the massive Mister Moon in a small wagon and rowing him in a frail boat on the lake.

Although she has help, it is the resourceful Harriet who primarily moves the story forward, and author Philip Stead gives her tremendous agency (and a sharp imagination). She makes herself a ladder to retrieve the moon, and she makes the wagon used for transporting him. She can even “change her room into a little house” so that she can make her cello sing. With a superb balance between text and art, Music for Mister Moon is a vivid journey into a child’s nuanced inner world.

David Zeltser’s tale of adventure, The Night Library, is inspired by Patience and Fortitude, the lions sculpted from pink Tennessee marble that guard the main entrance of the New York Public Library. The story—rendered by illustrator Raúl Colón with reverence, energy, cool blue hues for the night sky and warm earth tones for indoors—is told from the point of view of a young boy on the eve of his 8th birthday. He is disappointed when his parents give him a book, but later that night, he is greeted by a lion named Fortitude who stands outside his bedroom window. They take off together on a night journey into the “heart of the frozen city” and to the library, where the boy meets the second lion and tours the building with his new feline friends.

In the children’s section, the books fly off the shelves and form themselves into iconic book characters, such as Peter Rabbit and Mr. McGregor. The boy is moved to see another set of books form itself into the shape of his grandpa, reading to him. Before the boy heads home on the back of Patience, the boy spends quiet time in the library falling in love with literature, reading books he once shared with this grandfather. He writes it off the next day as a dream—until he finds a new library card, just for him, on the doormat outside his home.

Children’s books about the importance of reading are a dime a dozen, but The Night Library resonates on another level as it is also the story of a boy’s lingering grief following the loss of his grandfather. But sometimes richly colored stories can provide healing as well as adventure.

Julie Danielson conducts interviews and features of authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children's literature blog primarily focused on illustration and picture books.