Our Favorite Books about Fall

Library borrowing has become a bit of a competitive sport for me. A month ago I was explaining to Jeff that I was researching which Christmas picture books I wanted to read and putting them on hold, then suspending the hold until November 26, so that I could pick them up on the last day of the holding period and have them exactly the three weeks before Christmas, avoiding any need to return before the holiday. He rolled his eyes and said I always insist I'm bad at math and logistics, but apparently not because I excel at what he calls "library math".

I do this for other holidays and seasons as well, although none feels quite as competitive as Christmas. I know it may seem a bit extreme - is the perfect picture book really going to make our holiday/season that much better?

But it really does! We read a lot together in this house, and certain books really do seem to influence the way we talk about and approach a season together, or give us inspiration for things to do together.

We checked out a lot of books this fall and I wanted to share our top 5 favorites (Annika and I decided on these 5 together, so they are parent and child approved)! As much as we love the library we also enjoy building our own home library, and these five are now on our list to buy someday.

First, let's talk about a large theme in fall children's picture books that I was previously unacquainted with: the 'animals/trees have never experienced fall before and don't know how it works' trope. There are a surprisingly large number of books that explore this topic, and three of them made our top 5 this year.

1  - Fletcher and the Falling Leaves by Julia Rawlinson

Fletcher is the most darling little fox who is so worried about his favorite tree losing its leaves, and tries various methods to stop this from happening. I love the illustration style in this book (by Tiphanie Beeke), and the last page (spoiler alert) shows the tree covered in glittery icicles, with actually glitter on the page. Annika's actual response was "WOW!" the first time we read it.

2 - Little Tree by Loren Long

This book has such a sweet message about letting go and moving on that I found inspiring. Again we have a character who doesn't know about fall, a little tree who holds tight to his leaves because he's scared to let them go. I really liked the message of this book for myself, as well as for Annika.

3 - Sneeze, Big Bear, Sneeze! - by Maureen Wright

We read this book last year and liked it so much I knew we needed to check it out this year, too. Bear does try to nail the leaves back onto the tree, but his bigger problem is that he thinks his sneezes are making fall happen, when it's actually the autumn breeze. We laughed a lot at this story.

4 - Yellow Time by Lauren Stringer

I happened to see this one on a library display and grabbed it, and I'm so glad I did. The illustrations are gorgeous and we have started using the phrase "yellow time" when we see trees full of yellow leaves. The kids in the book also press leaves in a book at the end, which inspired us to do the same.

5 - Wild Child by Lynn Plourde

This was Annika's favorite fall book. The illustrations are just lovely, very colorful and imaginative. It's full of fun descriptive phrases that stick with you - "skitter scatter, acorns splatter" and "plumpy lumpy pulpy pumpkins".



Fall is almost over, so hopefully all this year's baby animals have figured it out and come to terms with leaves falling off trees.