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Celebrate all four seasons with these three new picture books that transport readers through the seasons and showcase the glories of Mother Nature.

Kim Norman’s Come Next Season captures the magic of a year spent outdoors on a journey from one summer to another. A brother and sister narrate the tale, anticipating the joys of each season—eating blueberries in the summer, filling their pockets with pecans in the fall, sledding with their dog in the winter and visiting “cheeping chicks” in the spring. The use of vivid figurative language animates their reveries, such as when they “scissor” their legs to warm up their bedsheets in winter and “roar like hungry bears” while jumping into piles of fall leaves. The well-paced text, with its gentle rhythms and perfect page turns, reveals the change of each season with a graceful and subtle fanfare. 

Daniel Miyares illustrates the children reveling in a screen-free, outdoor world. Vivid purples, yellows and reds are on display, but the bright, warm blues steal the show. The story comes full circle, opening with a visit to a lake and ending with a return visit. Both moments feature the girl leaping exuberantly into the water, but the latter visit includes a new puppy for a new year. 

A larger group of children plays outdoors through the seasons in Rebecca Grabill’s A Year With Mama Earth, illustrated by Rebecca Green. Both author and illustrator grew up in Michigan, and they base their words and art on those experiences. 

Children play and explore outside, from one autumn to the next, near a home in the woods. Toying with the notion of nature as “Mama Earth,” Grabill personifies objects in nature in evocative, lyrical language, such as pumpkin seeds that play peekaboo under fall leaves, oaks that are “stubborn,” geese that take vacations, sugar maples that sing sweet songs and rain that dances. Grabill describes Mama Earth with bustling verbs. She “tightens night’s reins,” “dresses holly shrubs in icicles,” “sings a lullaby to the fat black bear,” “bakes the ground dry as toast” and “gathers icy diamonds in her skirt.” Green’s richly colored illustrations depict a wide range of woodland creatures—from bees and squirrels to cardinals and deer. In a closing author’s note, Grabill likens Mama Earth to a “gentle, fun-loving” parent full of surprises and calls for readers to slow down and listen to nature speaking. 

Author-illustrator Eliza Wheeler’s Home in the Woods, narrated by 6-year-old Marvel, is a trip back in time to Depression-era Wisconsin. The book follows Marvel and her seven siblings from summer to spring as their family looks for a home after the death of their father. With each passing season, they are able to make the most out of having little. They create a home out of a shack in the woods, make a garden out of a “blanket of rotting leaves,” pitch in to do chores, fill their cellar with their garden harvests, hunt for food during the winter months and, working as a team, manage to thrive. 

Wheeler often singles out objects in the children’s lives in her lush, detailed spreads. Her language is rich—there are “crystal rains,” berries that are “sweet jewels of blue and red” and “ruby leaves”—and she uses repetition to great effect. An author’s note reveals that the story is based on her grandmother’s experiences. It’s a story, she writes, about finding “inventive ways to work together.” 

The fall holiday season is a time for gathering with loved ones and for sharing foods we wait for all year long. But how often do we consider the inherited significance behind our festive tables? How often do we truly give thanks for the food before us? Two new picture books, Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story and Apple Cake: A Gratitude, reveal how food—and the act of creating and sharing it—can mean much more than a contented stomach.

In Kevin Noble Maillard’s Fry Bread, a family gathers to prepare a traditional Native American fry bread meal. For each step—mixing, frying and waiting—the bread represents an important aspect of their heritage. They may be making fry bread, but what they are truly creating is family, tradition and abiding pride in both.

Deftly illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal, every page of Fry Bread is imbued with Native American history and culture. Echoes of ancient cave art, symbolic tattoos, handmade baskets and ceremonial designs tell a story of tradition. Family names (written by the illustrator’s children) and an image of the author’s aunt (who taught him to make fry bread) give Fry Bread an incredibly personal, cherished feel. Soft and subdued, Fry Bread is warm, inviting and uplifting.

Although Fry Bread’s narrative stands on its own, its message continues in a comprehensive author’s note. Over several pages, Maillard details the origins of fry bread as well as the complicated and often overlooked history of Native Americans in the United States. Maillard, who is an enrolled citizen of the Seminole Nation, also raises current issues, including health and medical care, racial diversity within today’s Native communities and the continuing struggle for recognition. With a list of additional references and resources, Fry Bread’s backmatter serves as an accessible resource tucked inside a children’s picture book. Rich with smells and sounds, Fry Bread radiates with Native American pride, the sharing of traditions and the love of family.

Unpretentious and charming, Dawn Casey’s Apple Cake follows a little girl in bright yellow boots as she and her energetic pup greet farm animals and tromp through fields to gather the ingredients to make apple cake. At each step, the girl acknowledges all the living things and elements that will come together to make her meal, including trees, bees, cows and rain. Once she finally makes her way home, she (and a few new friends) helps turn the apples, honey and milk into a treat.

Told with an easy rhyme scheme and friendly language, Apple Cake speaks to even the youngest readers. Reminiscent of a lullaby or prayer, Apple Cake offers assurance in its comforting rhythms and the heartening words of thanks. Genevieve Godbout’s illustrations have old-fashioned sensibility. Muted, pastel colors and gentle lines give movement to the land, while colored-pencil strokes create a world that is delicate in texture, almost enchanted. The animals are calm and familiar, and the simple, bold faces of characters are amiable and timeless.

The finishing touch for a book that will genuinely bring people together is a recipe for apple cake, which sagely includes advice for cooking with children. Just as Apple Cake’s story concludes with a picnic, reading this book may result in a trip to an apple orchard and homey smells from your own oven.