The Giverny Award committee also reviews plant story books for children. Another extensive list of children's books about herbs (both fiction and non-fiction) can be found on Herbal Roots zine, a blog with a wealth of information for plant-based children's activities.

Cactus Hotel by Brenda B. Guiberson, illustrated by Megan Lloyd

Over a period of two hundred years, a saguaro cactus grows from a tiny seed to a Leviathan weighing eight tons. Many animals make their homes in the cactus throughout its life, and even when it topples and dies, its body continues to provide shelter for other desert-dwellers.

The fast-paced story of life and death is supplemented by a one-page explanation of saguaro biology. Many details of cactus ecology naturally unfold as a logical part of the plot. Drawings in the desert's soft pastel palette successfully marry the grandiosity of desert landscape with the intimate vivacity of details on plant and animal life.

Ages 4 - 8.

A Log's Life by Wendy Pfeffer, illustrated by Robin Brickman

An oak tree in a forest provides homes and food for a variety of animals and fungi, until a storm topples the tree. The log houses other creatures as it decays back to earth, and its humus becomes nourishment for another oak seedling.

The book vividly captures the oak-tree's importance to animal life in photographs of sophisticated paper sculptures. Despite centering the story around the life and death of an oak, Pfeffer strongly prioritize the oak's usefulness to other creatures over the tree as an interesting life form in its own right. While Brickman beautifully illustrates hepaticas, mosses, and lady's slippers, Pfeffer only mentions the moss--and, since rootlessness is key to moss biology, her claim that the moss's "thick roots break down the wood" spells real trouble for anyone hoping to use this book to teach children about plants. The review by the Giverny Award committee points out that artistic strengths of the book may outweigh the misleading information.

Ages 4 - 8.

Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert

Inside a leaf pile, several leaves cluster together to form the shape of a man, who then flies over much scenery formed entirely from colorful fallen leaves.

The illustrations of the fallen leaves are beautiful throughout the book and invite "picture-finding" in creative ways. Front and back flyleaves identify leaves with species names. The entire book is an invitation to pick up fallen leaves from sidewalks and lawns and start making your own pictures. The author describes how she started making color copies of leaves to create her artwork. The top margin of each page is cut in creative ways to assemble beautifully stylized landscapes that change as pages turn. Some of the "Leaf Art" is abstract enough that the book might be a little challenging for 3-year-olds. And the story might be too simple to keep the attention of an 8-year old. But somewhere in between there is a sweet spot that begs for a dreamy adult's company during story time.

Ages 3 - 8.

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney

Alice Rumphius, who grows up in a town by the sea, follows her childhood dreams of seeing the world. When she finds herself sick and unable to travel, she realizes she still needs to fulfill her grandfather's charge to make the world a more beautiful place. After getting better, she discovers that the lupines from her garden have been spreading through scattering their seeds. So Miss Rumphius spends her old age walking along Maine's coastal roads flinging lupine seeds from her pockets everywhere, creating a riot of color the next spring.

Told in the voice of Miss Rumphius' great-niece, the story encourages a young girl to seek beauty and meaning in a life lived independently and according to her own desires. Prose and images flow with grace, mirroring Miss Rumphius' graceful path through life. The story is so appealing that it's hard to dampen its magic by pointing out a huge ecological problem: Scattering seeds of cultivated plants in the wild is never a good idea. Sadly, according to William Cullina of the New England Wild Flower Society, the garden-variety lupines along Maines' coasts out-compete the native lupine, thus depriving a rare butterfly, the Karner blue, of food for its caterpillars. I love the story of Miss Rumphius so much that I would hate to pull it from the shelves of school libraries--so I find myself wishing for librarians, teachers, and parents who will teach ecology as part of teaching how to live well in this world, adults who don't mind teaching a more complicated version of beautiful storyline.

Ages 3 - 8.

Night Tree by Eve Bunting, illustrated by Ted Rand

A family travels to the forest at Christmas time to decorate a tree with natural treats for the wildlife. They walk through starry dark, have hot cocoa, and sing Christmas carols, then return home, imagining the animals sneaking up to "their" tree and feasting on popcorn, apples, nuts, and breadcrumbs.

A delightful alternative for those of us who resent telling tales that portray the only possible outcome of human relationship with tree as the death of the tree (my apologies to all of you who love The Giving Tree and A Tree Named Steve -- but I find the message of those tales disturbing). The children in Night Tree learn to recognize "their" tree as a living, growing creature who looks a little different each year, and who has meaning for other beings on this earth, with humans acting as infrequent visitors taking home memories of family togetherness and delight in the welfare of fellow beings.

Ages 4 - 8.

Poetrees by Douglas Florian

Double-sided portraits of trees in water-color, crayon, or collage frame short, simple poems about different tree species, about roots, seeds, and leaves. The words themselves weave and meander, mirroring meaning and rhythm of language in the playful arrangement of letters.

Not really a story book--if I can find more children's plant poe-tree (or books of plant songs?) I will make a new page!

Age 6 - 10.

Shanleya's Quest by Thomas J. Elpel, illustrated by Gloria Brown

Shanleya is sent by her grandfather to explore an archipelago in which each island represents a plant family. She must paddle her canoe from island to island, prove to each plant family's "guardian" that she knows something about the plants he represents, and collect some of what each plant family offers to humankind. Along the way, we find out that the islands are the tips of branches of an underwater tree representing the evolutionary relationships of plants.

The author's deep knowledge of botany is conveyed effectively, though the prose and storyline frequently sound wooden. This shortcoming, fortunately, only pertains to language and plot--the individual images and metaphors succeed in their poetry, as the author conjures up time falling as rain and plant family islands full of sensual detail. For readers who can put up with a lack of flow in language and storyline, the book does a beautiful job teaching the usefulness and morphological traits of prominent plant families, offering many avenues to take learned concepts out into botanical explorations of a child's daily life.

Ages 9 to 99.

Sunflower House by Eve Bunting, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt

A little boy plants a circle of sunflowers on his parents' lawn. He waters the seeds and watches the plants grow tall and bloom all summer, while he and his friends play inside their circle. In the fall, their sadness about the collapsing plants is tempered when they realize that the seeds will produce more plants the next year.

The story is told in rhymes; the drawings in watercolor and colored pencil excel in their choice of perspective and color tone. The drawings also are botanically accurate, even in the choice of weeds not mentioned in the story.

Ages 4 to 8.

Redwoods by Jason Chin

A little boy's imagination gets sucked into a book about redwood trees as he rides the underground. After he exits, he finishes reading the book on a bench, realizes he's late for something, and leaves the book behind as he scrambles off. A little girl finds the book and walks off reading, getting drawn into the text.

This book is nothing short of magical: In the images that tell the story, the little boy holds the same book that we are now reading. The text we read is the text he is reading - a non-fiction account of facts about redwood trees. But the images take us inside the little boys mind, where the simple statements about trees dramatically expand into a story of jaw-dropping wonder. This is a book about the power of books just as much as it is about the power of trees - a celebration of science and of the imagination.

Ages 4 to 8.

The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Steven Kroll, illustrated by Jeni Bassett

Two little mice independently fertilize, water, and pamper the same pumpkin vine - one to win the pumpkin contest at the fair, and the other to carve the biggest-ever Jack-o-lantern. When they find out about each other, they realize that they can help each other reach both goals.

This sweet tale of collaboration and getting along leaps over the potential point of conflict, never raising the question of ownership and plopping the two mouse-boys right down into happy agreement. Unfortunately, the illustrator doesn't seem to understand that a pumpkin vine has roots, so the mice fertilize and water the pumpkin fruit, and the vine--which actually feeds this growth, appears to come from nowhere, a mere decorative extension of the pumpkin fruit, which the illustrator seems to regard as the actual plant.

Ages 4 to 8.

The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss, illustrated by Crockett Johnson

A little boy plants a carrot seed and persists in weeding and watering it, despite his entire family's claims that it will not grow. The seed keeps its promise.

If you loved Harold and the Purple Crayon, you will likely love this book. The story's simplicity engenders timelessness: The book has been in print since 1945. If you've ever planted carrots, you will know that getting a carrot from a single seed does indeed require a leap of faith - so if you intend to tie reading this book to hands-on gardening for your youngsters, be sure to check germination rates and plan(t) accordingly!

Ages 4 to 8.

The Dandelion Seed by Joseph P. Anthony, illustrated by Cris Arbo

A dandelion seed fears letting go of the flower head, but is swept up into the world onto a wild and windy ride of discovery. Loneliness and excitement of travel end as the seed falls to ground and sleeps through the calm of winter. Spring brings transformation of seed to seedling, mature plant, and flower, ending with a whisper to the last of the new generation of dandelion seeds, imploring it to "Just let go..."

The illustrations in this book beautifully reflect both naturalistic detail and the emotional drama of the unfolding story. The tale captures the plant life cycle without sacrificing plot or poetry of language. Text and drawings open up plenty of space for questions and conversation, inviting repeated reading and small and large discoveries around the margins of the main tale.

Ages 4 and up.

The Fairy Doll by Rumer Godden

Elizabeth becomes clumsier and clumsier and more and more stupid as she is picked on by her three older siblings. But when her great-grandmother encourages her to keep the fairy doll from the Christmas tree with her, something goes "ting" in her mind, and she comes to trust that sound.

The 1956 edition of this book has lovely pencil drawings. But the main charm of the story, to a botanist, lies in the imaginative use of plant parts as Elizabeth outfits a "cave" for her fairy doll. The wealth of berries, mosses, buds, and petals encourages a close look at the disregarded and discarded plant "litter" in any yard and sets the mind soaring with possibility.

Ages 6 to 9.

The Lotus Seed by Sherry Garland illustrated by Tatsuro Kiuchi

A little girl tells about her Vietnamese grandmother's flight from war, during which she saves and brings with her a lotus seed that she has picked to remind her about watching the emperor cry on the day of his abdication. The girl's brother steals the seed from their grandmother and plants it in a mud puddle. The grandmother's sorrow over loss of the seed of remembrance lifts when a lotus plant springs from the puddle, and the grandchildren continue to pass on the plant's new seeds along with their grandmother's story.

The dark complexity of the oil-paint illustrations resonates with the story's sorrows. While this book does not focus on botanical detail, it beautifully illustrates the bonds between culture, emotion, and plants.

Ages 7 and up.

The Oak inside the Acorn by Max Lucado, illustrated by George Angelini

An acorn falls from its "mother" tree into the bed of a pickup truck, ends up in a patch of dirt next to a newly planted orange tree, and--after it germinates--is transplanted next to a farm house. It develops a relationship with the little girl living at the farm and they "grow up" together. The story ends with the girl leaving the farm and drawing encouragement from the thought that the tree also had to leave its "mother" when it was an acorn.

The story center's around "mother oak's" advice to the young acorn to "Just be the tree God made you to be." This advice is meant to fortify the tree against its worries about being unable to grow oranges, like it's friend the orange tree, or flowers, like the daisies and roses in the yard. Though the story feels rather bland, I like that it gives children a sense that trees are alive and change over time, which is hard for children to observe because the time span is so much longer than their attention span.

Ages 6 to 10.

The Silver Nutmeg by Palmer Brown

Anna Lavinia plunges through a dew pond into a poetic world where gravity is replaced by "the tingle", which is "like the touch of clean cool sheets after a bath on a hot summer night, or the smell of the first burning leaves in autumn. It was like the taste of the first wild strawberry in springtime, or the sound of a train's whistle far off at midnight in winter. It was a little, too, like the tickle before a sneeze, or the thrill that comes when the knot in the ribbon of a gift just begins to loosen." In exploring, floating adrift, and finding her way back, Anna Lavinia shows her favorite uncle a way home and brings rose apples back with her to plant magic in the real world.

Full of flowers, shrubs, and exotic spices, the story wets your socks on dewy mornings, tingles you to the tops of trees, and puckers your nose with green paw-paw preserves. Palmer Brown's delicate line drawings and his quirky poetry enchant you yet further in and out and and far away, returning you back home to find magic in your spice drawer and under roadside grass.

Ages 5 - 9.

Tops & Bottoms by Janet Stevens

Cunning, land-less hare strikes a deal with his lazy, land-owning neighbor, bear: He will plant vegetables, and in exchange for his efforts get to keep whichever half of the plants bear does not want. When bear says he wants the tops, hare plants root crops; when, the next season, bear wants the bottoms, hare plants leaf crops. In the end, hare has earned enough to buy land for himself, and bear has to plant for himself.

Sleepy bear will teach you in how many different ways you can conk out in a porch chair, and hare will show you in how many ways you can prod a sleeping bear to wake up. Vegetables, too, seem to acquire personalities as they grow or lie in heaps. The story moves swiftly along the "don't-mess-with-success" line of "one, two, three, and magic happens", pleasing children just as surely as any encounter with the three little pigs or Goldilocks' bears.

Ages 4 - 8.