It’s spring! Besides playing outside, what better way to celebrate a new season than to read picture books (except maybe playing nature-themed board games, shown over here). I present to you my top 12 favorite spring-themed picture books. These books capture the best of spring (besides Easter, those books are over here): including gardens, seeds, flowers, rain, and a fresh, new start.

The above book is just so beautiful and inspiring! I love that it shows a family working together to plant a garden, the work involved, and the wonder that comes with a growing garden. It’s based on the real-life story of the family of Chip and Joanna Gaines. Their Magnolia Farms garden all started with a indoor house plant, a fern. The whole family learned a lesson when it died, then applied that lesson to growing a successful outdoor garden.

This book is so adorable! I just love it when authors come up with whimsical stories like this. I review it over here.

This book above is so enchanting and inspiring! It just makes me want to go learn everything I can about George Washington Carver. He’s so fascinating! An amazing story of how childhood interests continue into adulthood.

I love the vintage 1950s drawings in this book. Yes, let’s bring back trees as fun things to play with for our screen-saturated children. A tree is sooo nice!

This book shows the lovely wildness of being outdoors. Let’s go fly a kite and run on the beach! Who knows, maybe the author/illustrator are portraying summer, but I’m so excited about spring I’ll claim it for now.

This book somehow helps you appreciate doing hard stuff, like going to an unusual school, even when it rains, which tends to happen a lot during spring.

It’s just fun to enjoy simple natural things, like the little girl in this book does with rocks, which can be found easily in the spring.

This book, showing a true story, doesn’t happen all in spring but it shows the magic of symbolic “springs” in our lives when we start over. You can read my review over here.

The little girl in this story plants a garden with her mom and enjoys the fruits of her labors.

I just love the illustrations in this book! It tells of all the things that happen in spring.

What happens to seeds in the spring? How do they get where they can sprout and grow? This book tells us all about them.

Oh my! I have to get this book to add to my Little Golden Book collection. It’s a picture book version of the classic story The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It’s a magical story of friendship, kindness, and belief in possibilities, all symbolized by spring.

This book shows how different scientists explored nature as children. It is great for getting kiddos to get out and study the simple natural wonders in their neighborhood. That is more easy to do now that it is spring right? I love Snowflake Bentley but personally I’d rather go out to the wild outdoors without bundling up in the freezing weather to enjoy nature. I love that this book shows 9 different real scientists explored nature as curious children, collecting specimens to show a love of learning. Some of these people it shows are George Washington Carver, Mary Annig, and Jane Goodall. I really don’t know how the author knows exactly what these people did as children. Here’s a video below of the book being read aloud. The complete list of scientists is over here on the publisher’s page. Click on the “reviews and media” tab. It also has a list of how to treat nature respectfully when building a collection of specimens.

Want more spring-themed titles? Go here to get a free ebook full of titles you can request from your public library from their regular collection or through inter-library loan.