(The content below contains Amazon affiliate links. When you buy through these links, Mrs. Ferraris may earn an affiliate commission at no additional cost to you. The Retired School Librarian is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. These titles can be found under my Amazon Storefront under Fungi Picture Books– https://www.amazon.com/shop/mrs.ferraris/list/HI3P3S9Q1GEE?ref_=aipsflist .)
❗This cumulative list grows over time, with the newest books always appearing at the top.❗
Fairy Rings
by Lisa Owings (Author)
Summary: Various cultures have created folktales about fairy rings to explain these circles of fungi. This nonfiction book describes where, what, and how these rings grow.
Comments: Several text features are included, such as diagrams, labels, bold words, and so on. There is also a glossary at the back.
There is a glossary in the back.
I remember growing up with a fairy ring in our front yard and the tales our parents would tell about it. I wish there had been books like this when I was growing up so I could investigate further.
Rating: 5/5 📗📗📗📗📗
Details and buying options are on this book’s Amazon page.
*This book is one of the Mysterious Nature series and can be bought on their Amazon page.
Fungi Grow
by Maria Gianferrari (Author), Diana Sudyka (Illustrator)
Summary: Young readers will learn how fungi grow above, on, and under the ground. Mushrooms can be edible, poisonous, or medicinal. There are mushroom details of how they multiply and what animals eat them. The underground fungi network helps the forest.
Comments: The gouache watercolors are detailed with two-paged spreads or small vignettes that move the nonfiction story along as we read the large print prose and the smaller informative text for more details.
This would be an excellent addition to the mushroom section in any children’s library collection.
Rating: 5/5 📗📗📗📗📗
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’s Amazon page.
Mushrooms & Fungi for Kids: An Introduction to Mycology
by Ariel Bonkoski (Author)
Summary: This nonfiction paperback serves as a beginner’s guide to the mushrooms and fungi of North America. It contains numerous diagrams, labels, and photos of various fungi, along with suggested activities.
Comments: I love field guides like this and especially for children. It shares the basics with many colored photos. Adults who are just learning about fungi and mushrooms will also appreciate this.
A glossary is included in the back.
Perfect size to fit in a pocket or backpack while hiking.
Rating: 5/5 📗📗📗📗📗
Details and buying options are on this book’s Amazon page.
We Spy Fungi: Search and Find Mushrooms, Cacti, and Other Fascinating Plants
by Rebecca Donnelly (Author), Francisco Fonseca (Illustrator)
Summary: This global nonfiction book explores mushrooms and other fascinating plants, focusing on fungi and their ecosystems.
Comments: This book illustrates and discusses fourteen different ecosystems, featuring short text squares with information about various plants and animals within each ecosystem.
This book illustrates and discusses 14 different ecosystems.
II did not see the medium used listed in this book. I would have liked photos of the fungi included, a map showing the location of each ecosystem, and a glossary at the back.
Rating: 4.5/5 📗📗📗📗1/2
Details and buying options are on this book’s Amazon page.
The selected children’s books are chosen by a certified, retired elementary school librarian who passionately reads and recommends picture books to teachers, school librarians, parents, grandparents, and other book enthusiasts.
Most of the books Mrs. Ferraris recommends are checked out from the public library. The only exception is for the complimentary copies that she receives for an honest review, which are duly noted.
(The content below contains Amazon affiliate links. When you buy through these links, Mrs. Ferraris may earn an affiliate commission at no additional cost to you.)
You Stole My Name Too: A Curious Case of Animals and Plants with Shared Names
by Dennis McGregor (Author), Blue Star Press (Producer)
Brief summary: This is a collection of humorous poems featuring animals and plants with the same names. Sometimes the reasons for the naming are evident, and sometimes not.
Comments: This is the second collection of poetry in the “You Stole My Name Series.”
The four-line poem is on the left side of the two-page spread, with the animal and plant illustration on the right.
This is an oversized book that really shows the details in his paintings. Prints of the illustrations are sold on his website.
Rating: 4.5/5 📗📗📗📗1/2
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’s Amazon page.
Children’s book titles are carefully handpicked by a certified elementary school librarian who, although retired, still enjoys reading children’s books, especially picture books, and recommending them to busy teachers, school librarians, parents, grandparents, and other book lovers.
Most of the books Mrs. Ferraris reads before recommending are checked out from the public library, except for those much-appreciated complimentary copies sent to her for an honest review. Those are noted.
(The content below contains Amazon affiliate links. When you buy through these links, she may earn an affiliate commission at no additional cost to you.)
Love Grows
by Ruth Spiro (Author), Lucy Ruth Cummins (Illustrator)
Brief summary: A young girl’s auntie sends her a plant per month with a tag of information about the plant. By the end of the year, the girl has a plant garden.
Comments: The front and back-pasted end pages outline the twelve plants with the Latin name, origins, and light preference.
This story is done in rhyme. The illustrations are gouache, colored pencil, and crayon.
Rating: 3.5/5 📗📗📗1/2
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’s Amazon page.
Children’s book titles are carefully handpicked by a certified elementary school librarian who, although retired, still enjoys reading children’s books, especially picture books, and recommending them to busy teachers, school librarians, parents, grandparents, and other book lovers.
Most of the books Mrs. Ferraris reads before recommending are checked out from the public library, except for those much-appreciated complimentary copies sent to her for an honest review. Those are noted.
(The content below contains Amazon affiliate links. When you buy through these links, Mrs. Ferraris may earn an affiliate commission at no additional cost to you.)
Garden Walk
by Virginia Brimhall Snow (Author)
Brief summary: Grammy and her four grandchildren walk through the forest and to the garden, learning about plants, animals, and insects. They place a blanket on the ground and picnic while Grammy reads to them. Narrated by one of the children.
Comments: Blue ink illustrations with the plants, animals, or insects highlighted with full-colored words that match the subject.
Picnic recipes are in the back.
Rating: 4/5 📗📗📗📗
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’s Amazon page.
If you enjoy this book, you may be interested in Virginia Brimhall Snow’s Seasonal Walks series. For more details or to buy, continue reading o this book’s Amazon page.
Love Makes a Garden Grow
by Taeeun Yoo (Author, Illustrator)
Brief summary: A young girl and her grandfather tend a garden together until he moves to an apartment where he brings some of his plants.
She grows up and lives far away, but her grandfather sends her a gift of peonies. When her daughter grows, the granddaughter visits the man showing her little one how to tend the house plants and flowers like he taught her.
Comments: An Author’s Note in the back explains how this story is based on her relationship with her grandfather.
Rating: 3.5/5 📗📗📗 1/2
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’sAmazon page.
Linh’s Rooftop Garden (Where In the Garden?)
by JaNay Brown-Wood (Author), Samara Hardy (Illustrator)
Brief summary: Lihn needs to find blueberries for their brunch and walk around the rooftop looking at all the fruits and vegetables. The girl describes what a blueberry looks like and compares those characteristics to each plant methodically until she finds them.
Comments: There is a blueberry and banana pancake recipe in the back.
Rating: 3.5/5 📗📗📗 1/2
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’sAmazon page.
If you enjoy this book, you may be interested in the other three books of the Where in the Garden?series:
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Watch Me Bloom: A Bouquet of Haiku Poems for Budding Naturalists
by Krina Patel-Sage (Author, Illustrator)
Brief summary: A collection of twenty-four haikus about different flower species, all illustrated with lovely bright colors, including the paste-down end pages.
Comments: There are Floral Fun Facts in the back of the book.
Rating: 3.5/5 📗📗📗 1/2
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’sAmazon page.
Just a Worm
by Marie Boyd (Author, Illustrator)
Brief summary: Worm begins its day crawling through the garden when two humans cause it to have self-doubt. The worm crawls through a garden talking with each insect and creature it comes across, asking what it can do. Will the worm realize its importance to a garden and regain self-confidence?
Comments: The back pages include Make Your Own Quilled Butterfly, Earthworm Facts, and a Glossary. Illustrated using quilling techniques to make the plants.
I recommend that this picture book be read to supplement a quilling unit.
Rating: 4/5 📗📗📗📗
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’sAmazon page.
George Washington Carver: More Than “The Peanut Man” (Bright Minds): More Than “The Peanut Man”
by Janel Rodriguez (Author), Subi Bosa (Illustrator)
I’ve only known George Washington Carver as the “peanut man” and updated my education when reading this narrative nonfiction about this knowledgeable and talented man nicknamed “Plant Doctor.”
Brief summary: This book begins with his life as a child who studied plants and painted them. It continues with his young adulthood of going to college, learning, and experimenting with plants. The book tells of his adulthood of going around in a Jesup wagon, educating farmers on improving their crops and livestock. Readers will learn about many of his inventions and personal life too. I enjoyed reading about this remarkable man.
Comments: This book is full of a variety of nonfiction text features. The back sections include Your Turn!, Glossary, Index, and Further Reading.
Rating: 4/5 📗📗📗📗
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’sAmazon page.
Little Land
by Diana Sudyka (Author, Illustrator).
Brief summary: This is an ecological/environmental story from the beginning of the earth to its present of how the land and its inhabitant have changed and how to live in balance.
Comments: I included this book under gardening(although it could be under ecology or environmental) as it highlights how to tend a little bit of land.
Rating: 4/5 📗📗📗📗
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’sAmazon page.
Every Little Seed
by Cynthia Schumerth (Author), Elisa Paganelli (Illustrator)
Brief summary: A young girl with her mother and grandfather plant seeds in the spring garden and tend them to grow, observing how the seed changes to develop. Birds and bugs visit the garden. Soon fall comes when the plants begin to produce seeds they gather for the next planting.
Comments: A plant’s cycle.
A story in rhyme.
Facts about seeds are in the back of the book, including a seed diagram.
Rating: 4/5 📗📗📗📗
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’sAmazon page.
A Flower is a Friend
by Frieda Wishinsky (Author), Karen Patkau (Illustrator)
Brief summary: An animal/creature is paired with a flower in the garden, and readers are asked why they coexist so well. Answers are in the book of how they benefit each other.
Symbiosis.
Rating: 3/5 📗📗📗
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’sAmazon page.
My First Garden: For Little Gardeners Who Want to Grow
by Livi Gosling (Author)
Brief summary: This nonfiction book is a beginning guide to gardening with step-by-step instructions. Everything one needs to know is covered with illustrations.
Comments: This is for the primary children to learn by looking at the lovely illustrations or for older elementary students who want to start a gardening club.
I usually stick to picture book reviews, but this nonfiction book’s illustrations make a difference with the covered topics by clarifying the lesson.
Ratings:4/5 📗📗📗📗
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’sAmazon page.
A Garden in My Hands
by Meera Sriram (Author), Sandhya Prabhat (Illustrator)
Brief summary: A little girl has her hands Painted by her mother for a wedding the next day. Her mother tells her memories as she paints a garden of flowers and decorations. She sleeps with gloves on over the henna to wake and brush the flakes off to reveal her red garden of stories and the fragrance of henna.
Comments: Facts about henna are in the back of the book.
Rating: 3/5 📗📗📗
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’sAmazon page.
G is for Gardening (A Gardening ABC Primer)
by Ashley Marie Mireles (Author), Volha Kaliaha (Illustrator)
Brief summary: Readers will learn their ABCs of gardening, discovering tools, plants, and animals in a garden.
Comments: Large and colorful illustrations. A good builder of garden vocabulary.
Rating: 3/5 📗📗📗
Continue reading for more details and buying options on this book’sAmazon page.
Children’s book titles are carefully handpicked by a certified elementary school librarian who, although retired, still enjoys reading children’s books, especially picture books, and recommending them to busy teachers, school librarians, parents, grandparents, and other book lovers.
Most of the books Mrs. Ferraris reads before recommending are checked out from the public library, except for those much-appreciated complimentary copies sent to her for an honest review. Those are noted.
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