Children's books to inspire outdoor play 🪣

Notes From the Reading Nook: June 14

(Why a bucket? Somehow my children always end up with a bucket while playing outside. A few weeks ago I looked out the kitchen window and saw our largest stockpot sitting on a small platform my husband built into the birch tree next to their playhouse. How did it get there? No one knows.)

Anyway: hi! Hello. It’s very hot here, high of 96 today, which I can barely fathom (I am not my best self in any kind of heat). Our daycare is closed for several weeks, so my husband and I are playing a fun little juggling game called “Who gets to go to the office today, and who works from home with two children who ask for snacks every 20 minutes?” Nevertheless, there is my mom, who is able to help us two days a week by taking our children overnight 🙏 ; there is an impromptu bookstore visit to celebrate the end of school; there is a delightful local pizza place, surprise ice cream, small-town carnivals, my brother and sister-in-law and niece and nephew; there is long solo walks, line-drying our clothes, and bruschetta; there is reading to my daughters separately (a rare treat for everyone involved) on a hot summer night.

Even when it all feels next to impossible (and frustrating, and like I am constantly trying to solve a Rubik’s cube in my mind, and I even lean a little toward hopeless), I’m grateful for my one, incredibly valuable life.

I read two books at the same time over the weekend, something I rarely do, but when my paperback fiction subscription from Room of One’s Own arrived for June, I had to half-drop everything else and start The Bear Woman by Karolina Ramqvist immediately — it just seemed too weird and intriguing to delay, and I was right. It was entirely weird and intriguing, and it also reminded me that mothers — well, at least ones with interests outside of their children (writing, work, whatever it may be) — have struggled, do struggle, to find the balance. The things on the other side of the scale differ, sure — and I’m not all that certain it’s an either/or, binary-type situation between children and interests outside of them, that’s probably a false dichotomy, but damn if it doesn’t feel exactly that way sometimes. It was comforting to be reassured that there’s nothing wrong with me — or, at least, nothing substantially wrong. Does it ever get old, any message that amounts to, “It’s not just you?” Maybe I will print a t-shirt that says, “It’s not just you!” and then wherever I go, I’ll be reassuring people that the thing they beat themselves up over, the complex challenge of their life, doesn’t exist because they suck, because they’re a bad mother, because they’re not enough or too much, because they don’t have it together: we all wrestle something and not a single one of us is alone. It’s not just you.

I’m going to work like a maniac all day in my office that has sketchy humidity control despite being quite lovely and beautiful, and go home this afternoon to take my children to the pool, and they will know I love them, that I do everything I can for them, that I am present with them when we are together, and a whole cosmos of support and togetherness and love can exist this way. Maybe “balance” is beside the point.

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Mini issue + a micro review

Today I’m going to do a mashup of two things I often include in these Tuesday messages, but never before together: a mini issue (on outdoor play, hooray!) and a micro review of a title I highly recommend for just this purpose.

First, a list of books to inspire your kids (and you!) to go out, get wild, get dirty, explore, and have fun:

• Daniel Finds a Poem by Micha Archer (I reviewed this in issue No. 44)

• Go, Bikes, Go! by Addie Boswell

• Run Wild by David Covell

• Secret Tree Fort by Brianne Farley

• The Hike by Alison Ferrell

• We All Play by Julie Flett (highly recommended for 1-2yo)

• Incredibilia by Libby Hathorn

• Everything You Need for a Treehouse by Carter Higgens

• The Raft by Jim LaMarche

• Roxaboxen by Alice McLerren

• The Bug Girl: A True Story by Sophia Spencer and Margaret McNamara (issue No. 19)

• There’s a Tiger in the Garden by Lizzie Stewart

• Backyard Fairies by Phoebe Wall (if you have a fairy-obsessed kiddo, let me know — I have a whole other booklist ready and waiting for you)

• What Can You Do With a Rock? by Pat Zietlow Miller

This list is by no means exhaustive — I know I’ve missed many wonderful titles, even intentionally (as I aspire to keep mini issues, well, mini).

Do you and your family have any favorite books about, or that inspire, outdoor play? Tell us about them!

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A Stick is An Excellent Thing: Poems Celebrating Outdoor Play by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by LeUyen Pham (2012)

First of all, I will read anything written by Marilyn Singer, ditto anything illustrated by LeUyen Pham — so when I first came across this rockstar partnership of a book, I snapped it up right away, and I’m so glad I did.

Singer’s extra playful poems as are masterful as ever (she has written 100+ books for children, many of them poetry, and her expertise is evident in everything she touches), ranging in topics from being the first one outside in the morning, to playing jacks and jumping romp, to swinging, to running through the sprinkler, playing hide and seek, making “soup” (surely why my stockpot is still outside), rolling down a hill — including, of course, an ode to the humble stick in the title poem, “A Stick Is An Excellent Thing.”

(It really is.)

Couple this with Pham’s lively pencil, ink, and digitally colored illustrations, which paint a vivid picture of a city neighborhood full of all different kinds of kids with all different kinds of outdoor interests, and this book perfectly captures the very real entertainment — not to mention deep-down pleasures — of playing outside.

This is a flexible title that can be enjoyed by toddlers up to late elementary-aged kids, who will either see themselves in its pages or be inspired to head outdoors and find a new version out there. (Dirty clothes and little scrapes and bug bites not required, but if you have ‘em, you know it’s been a good time.)

If you’d like further inspiration to get outside, you might also be interested in mini issues from the past:

• Children’s books about insects, pollinators, and some insects that are also pollinators

• Children’s books about camping, stargazing and constellations

• Children’s poetry books for Earth Day (applicable anytime)

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Read good books and take good care 😘
Sarah