Pockets Full of Secret Treasures

Anyone who has ever raved about the baby gear storage capacity beneath any given stroller is lying. Or maybe their child isn’t yet old enough to hop in and out of the stroller on the ride, repeatedly tossing found items into that storage space. Or maybe they’re simply taking walks in barren parking lots.

Either way, in my experience, that space is mainly good for one thing: leaves, feathers, sticks, and rocks — and don’t think about stuffing even a jacket in on top of those goodies, lest it accidentally damage a leaf. This isn’t limited to strollers, of course. Essentially any outdoor kids’ ride-on item is likely to be filled with the loot of the day’s walk (and maybe of the day’s before that, and the day’s before that. Oops.)

Leaves from this year? Last year? Who knows!

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Fall into Reading with Leaves, by David Ezra Stein

If I were so inclined, I think I could create a collection of nature-inspired children’s books that no one in my house would read but me. The trouble with some such books is that they lack any plotline that might keeps kids interested over a period of time. They might have lovely language, delightful images, or interesting information, but I think even those that have all three qualities can grow repetitive in their basic enumeration-of-things-that-move-about-the-woods narrative.

In more than a few cases, the art is the main draw (ha ha), the prose lacking. I have, for example, a book beautifully illustrated with cut paper, but the language is ho-hum. Still, for some reason, as long as perhaps two of the qualities mentioned earlier are reasonably well met, I can’t get enough of outdoorsy picture books. Today’s feature is a fun read for little ones as we enter the fall season.

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