Spring came early in Austin, as it tends to, and the wildflowers— at least the bluebonnets, the Indian paintbrush, and the poppies— are making room for the heartier Mexican hats and sunflowers. Gardens are growing lush with all the wonderful rain, ready to burst with fruits and vegetables! It’s the perfect time of year to learn more about how your family can reduce your carbon footprint and learn more about this amazing planet we live in. BookKids is here to help!
Our Earth Day display (complete with our very own BookKids’ “grown” tree) is filled with titles we’ve hand-selected for you! Grab the Farmer’s Market Create & Play Activity Book and make your own farmer’s market at home— see if you can make it as cool as one of the many wonderful farmer’s markets around town. Learn all about bees with the beautifully illustrated Bees: A Honeyed History and teach your friends about these amazing creatures that need our help to survive!
Our display also has many wonderful, conservation-minded stories you can read together as a family, like The Curious Garden by Peter Brown, Greenling by Levi Penfold and, of course, The Lorax by Dr. Seuss! Our beautiful tree is right off the stairs on our second floor, welcoming you into BookKids— you can’t miss it!
Once you make it past our tree, check out our Reading Without Walls display next to the Kids information desk and be ready to take on an awesome reading challenge! Gene Luen Yang, beloved author and National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature, started this challenge to read without walls in one of three ways in order to broaden our horizons:
- Read a book about a character who doesn’t look like you or live like you.
- Read a book about a topic you don’t know much about.
- Read a book in a format you don’t usually read (chapter book, graphic novel, picture book, book in verse, hybrid).
We’ve picked out a few of our favorites for this challenge, like Chinese Cinderella and Ugly for middle grade readers, and Six Dots for younger readers (or anyone, really)! We have great books like Rosie Revere’s Big Project Book for Bold Engineers and Coding Projects in Scratch in the world of STEM! The purpose of this challenge is to become more generous and empathetic readers, learn about new subjects, and discover great literature you might not have read otherwise. Round your choices out with a great audio book like The One and Only Ivan or A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel— or you can pick a great book of poetry from another one of our featured displays…
April is National Poetry Month and we love displaying some of our favorite titles, old and new. You will find the classics, like Dr. Suess and Shel Silverstein, because who doesn’t love Green Eggs and Ham and Where the Sidewalk Ends?! We have also selected some stunning new titles like staff favorite Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets, in which Kwame Alexander, Chris Colderley, and Marjory Wentworth offer a beautiful ode to the absolute greats, such as Naomi Shihab Nye, Walter Dean Myers, Pablo Neruda, and Maya Angelou! We also love the bilingual Mother Goose— La Madre Goose: Nursery Rhymes for Los Ninos is a great collection of classic rhymes with a twist. Perfect to start teaching the little ones some basic Spanish words!
Whether you want to grow a garden, gift a poetry classic, or dive into genre you don’t ordinarily read, we have so many wonderful titles for you! Come see our friendly and knowledgeable staff and explore these and many other displays at BookKids. Your favorite book is waiting!
-Staci, kids bookseller
BookPeople 
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