Title: Poems for Every Season: A Year of Haiku, Sonnets, and More
Author: Bette Westera (translated by David Colmer)
Illustrator: Henriette Boerendans (illustrations created with woodcuts)
Publisher/Year: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers/2026 (originally published in the Netherlands in 2024)
Format: Hardcover
Poems for Every Season is a lovely book featuring thirteen different types of poems and clever woodcut illustrations of a myriad of peaceful plants and adorable animals. The book, which has earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and others, is a joyful celebration of our four changing seasons. Back matter, written clearly and concisely, offers a definition of each poem type.
Teachers especially may find this book helpful while teaching poetry forms to their students. Kids will learn familiar forms like haiku, limericks, and sonnets, as well as fun unusual forms like elevenies, diamantes, and stacking poems. Kids and adults will surely delight in trying their hand at some of the different forms, such as the acrostic poem seen below for April entitled “Spring Fever.” In an acrostic, the first letter of each line spells out a name, word, or phrase. What name do you see in April’s poem?
Kids will love spotting all the furry, fuzzy, or flying animals, such as a fawn, a lamb, a woodpecker, a badger, a hedgehog, and a flock of geese, to name just a few, frolicking, foraging, and fluttering amid the flowers, trees, and gardens or scampering through the snow.
Poems for Every Season is a great introduction to poetry for kids, wrapped up in an appealing picture book that grownups will enjoy too. My grandmother Harriet was a poet and an animal lover, and I’m sure she would have liked this book.
The hedgehog gets its name from where it nests–hedges and shrubs–and the hog or pig-like grunting sounds it makes. Hedgehogs were once known as urchins, and that is how sea urchins got their name, thanks to their similar spiky appearance.
I’m pleased to introduce the third book in the Hello! series of board books by author Katherine Pryor and artist Rose Soino, Hello, Beach! This simply sweet, adorably illustrated book for the littlest book lovers follows Hello, Garden! and Hello, Rain! and precedes the fourth book Hello, Snow!, which is a 2025 Mom’s Choice Award Gold Winner. All four books from Schiffer Kids publishing, which are available now, feature the same fun-loving diverse family enjoying time together through the seasons in the great outdoors.I previously reviewed Hello, Rain! here on Frog on a Blog, and you can read that review HERE.
It’s currently 19 degrees F here in snow-covered upstate NY, the perfect time to showcase a book that is sure to bring the warmth of summer into your home. In Hello, Beach!, readers follow the family from heading to the water, discovering clams, launching a boat, watching the tide retreat, and finally saying a sleepy good night to the beach while the sun sets over the water.
Hello, Beach! offers a gentle rhyme scheme, the same as the other books in the series, along with the illustrator’s cute watercolor pictures, which depict lots of beachy fun, such as splashing toes, circling seagulls, sandcastles, scuttling crabs, and more. There are plenty of animal and nature scenes for parents to point out and for kids to admire.
All four together make a perfect set of “seasons-themed” board books.
Starfish (or sea stars) are not actually fish at all; they’re invertebrates, which means they have no backbone. These fascinating creatures can regenerate (regrow) missing or damaged limbs!
Summary: In this lyrical picture book illustrated by a two-time Caldecott Medalist, share in a blind child’s joyful experience of the changing seasons.
Where I live, seasons change. I know because my fingers and toes, my ears, my mouth and nose, all tell me so.
Neveah is blind, but that doesn’t mean she can’t enjoy each of the four wondrous seasons of the year.
She knows it’s winter when her boots go scruuunch in the snow and cold flakes land softly on her tongue.
She knows spring has come by the smell of hyacinths, the bzzzz of a bee in her ear.
Summer is a trip to the beach, where she can hear the crash of ocean waves and the keowww of seagulls overhead.
And when Neveah’s rake goes scritch scratch over fallen leaves and the air turns brisk, she knows it’s autumn. Soon the cycle of seasons will begin anew.
Join Neveah as she uses her senses of touch, taste, hearing, and smell to vividly describe the changing seasons and the unique delights they each have to offer.
Do you have a children’s picture book coming out soon? I’d love to wish it a Happy Book Birthday here on Frog on a Blog! For more information, CLICK HERE.
Of Note: Rhyming text, interactive illustrated overlays, and color photographs
I love trees of all shapes and sizes, so it’s my pleasure to share today, just in time for Earth Day and Arbor Day, which are both this week, two children’s picture books that take our relationship with trees to the next level. Before I tell you more about these books, let me back up just a bit. I mentioned that I love trees, but so do kids! There’s an interesting fascination that kids have with trees. Maybe it’s because trees are so big and kids are small. Or maybe it’s because trees come in many shapes and sizes and even colors. Trees are fun to climb and play in or play under. And trees often hold surprises, like birds and nests, squirrels and nuts, and pinecones and flowers. Let’s not forget the trees that change color in fall, like maples and oaks, and provide piles of crunchy leaves to jump in.
Yes, kids love trees, and that’s a good thing because trees are so very important in many ways. They remove carbon dioxide from the air we breathe, filter water, slow flooding, provide shade, support wildlife, and supply food and even medicines. My hope is that kids will take their love for and fascination with trees into adulthood and always appreciate them and find ways to protect them and our environment. In the meantime, picture books, like the ones I’m sharing today, will help kids love trees even more.
Hello, Treesis a lyrical story that follows a little girl through the seasons from spring to winter and back around to spring again. The kind, unnamed girl clearly cares about trees and has many questions that show her concern for their wellbeing. She wonders if they have souls. She compares their trunks and roots and branches to bodies, legs, and arms. And she asks if they feel pain or cold. The text is simple yet thought provoking, and it also evokes emotions, such as happiness and sadness. The illustrations are charming and full of life. As the seasons change, we see leaves just beginning to sprout in spring, branches overflowing with green leaves in summer, fall-colored leaves in autumn (as in the picture below), and bare trees surrounded by snow in winter. Along the way, we meet an abundance of insects, birds, and squirrels. On a couple of spreads, the girl shares names of trees she knows, like pine and willow, and some with strange sounding names, like wisteria and rainbow eucalyptus. Overall, this is a lovely book to share with the tree lovers in your family.
Back cover blurb: This is a book about trees. Do trees have souls? Why do they have such wrinkly skin? Do they smile? And how do they feel about birds’ nests in their branches? Let’s find out.
Tree Spiritsis a fun, interactive picture book that also asks questions and introduces emotions and features cute animals, but in a very different way from the first book. Simple, rhyming text and color photos of various trees on each spread encourage kids to use their imaginations as they ask themselves what they see when they look at each tree. Here’s how it works: A tree is pictured on one page, then you turn the page and see the same tree with an illustrated overlay depicting an animal. About 10 different animals are included, such as an alligator, a rabbit (see the cover image above), an octopus, and a horse. Here’s the text that goes with the first tree image below: “Oh my, what have we here? I see five columns standing quite near.” Then, after the child turns the page, they see the next image (second image below), which has an illustrated overlay, and we read: “Could it be a young elephant deep in a funk, crying big tears as they run down his trunk? Little elephant is feeling quite sad.” This book is for tree enthusiasts of all ages, especially those who love to stretch their imaginations, and it’s also a good first introduction for kids to different feelings, including more complicated ones, like eagerness, shyness, and alertness.
It’s worth noting that the reader may not always see the same image in the shape of the tree that the author or illustrator saw (I know I didn’t), and that’s part of the fun!For example, where they saw an alligator, I saw a dinosaur!
Out of the 25 known species of chipmunks (small, striped members of the squirrel family), 24 species are found only in North America.
Lauri Fortino's Frog On A (B)Log 