2025 Blogging A to Z Challenge: Plants
There are some absolutely beautiful nonfiction books about plants, flowers, and trees. I know it’s not hard to create beautiful books about nature, but these will encourage kids to take their time pouring over the details of the illustrations. Whether your kids love getting dirty in the yard or prefer to learn about nature from the comfort of the living room, I think everyone can learn a little about plants with this book list that is sure to surprise them!
I love when the seasons begin to turn and nature starts changing – small buds and flowers blooming in the spring, the leaves changing colors in the fall, and the quietness of snowfall on pine trees. And I think that encouraging kids to notice nature is so important. Because no matter where you live, you’ll always come across a little nature. You can even create your own vegetable garden in the backyard, or plant flowers in a box on the balcony. And if you’ve got a little extra money, have the kiddos choose a bouquet or two from the grocery store to set up at home. Having fresh floral bouquets around house always makes me smile!
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you. Please read the full disclosure for more information.
2025 Blogging A to Z Challenge: Plants
The Big Book of Blooms by Yuval Zommer
In The Big Book of Blooms, the fifth installment in the wildly successful BigBook series, Yuval Zommer’s charming illustrations bring to life some of the most colorful, flamboyant, and unusual flowers from across the globe.
In the opening pages, readers will learn all about botany, including how to recognize different types of flowers. Subsequent pages illustrate the various habitats that are home to flora such as pitcher plants, the giant water lily, and the weirdly wonderful corpse flower. Readers will discover which flowers are endangered and why some blooms are fragrant or colorful, not to mention grisly details about carnivorous and poisonous flowers.
Backpack Explorer: Discovering Trees
Curious kids will stop, look, listen, and touch as they search for types of leaves, count tree rings, gather pinecones, and feel bark. Each page is packed with prompts and activities, including field guides for identifying common trees, simple craft projects such as Make a Nature Mask from colorful leaves, and information about how trees grow and why we need them.
Botanicum by Kathy Willis, illustrated by Katie Scott
The 2017 offering from Big Picture Press’s Welcome to the Museum series, Botanicum, is a brilliantly curated guide to plant life. With artwork from Katie Scott of Animalium fame, Botanicum gives readers the experience of a fascinating exhibition from the pages of a beautiful book. From perennials to bulbs to tropical exotica, Botanicum is a wonderful feast of botanical knowledge complete with superb cross sections of how plants work.
Can You Hear The Trees Talking?: Discovering the Hidden Life of the Forest by Peter Wohlleben
Discover the secret life of trees with this nature and science book for kids: Can You Hear the Trees Talking? shares the mysteries and magic of the forest with young readers, revealing what trees feel, how they communicate, and the ways trees take care of their families. The author of The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben, tells kids about the forest internet, aphids who keep ants as pets, nature’s water filters, and more fascinating things that happen under the canopy.
Gardening Lab for Kids: 52 Fun Experiments to Learn, Grow, Harvest, Make, Play, and Enjoy Your Garden by Renata Brown
Author Renata Fossen Brown guides your family through fun activities that are also lessons about botany, ecology, the seasons, food, patience, insects, eating, and cooking. Have fun exploring:
- pollinators by making a pollinator palace out of bricks, sticks, twigs, bamboo, and pegboard.
- the basic elements of soil—sand, silt, and clay—by testing how well your soil drains with just a shovel, water, ruler, and timer.
- color theory by creating a table top color wheel from different colored annuals.
- native birds by making a bird feeder from an old picture frame and piece of screen.
Gardening Lab for Kids is the perfect book for creative families, friends, and community groups and works as lesson plans for both experienced and new gardeners. Children of all ages and experience levels can be guided by adults and will enjoy these engaging exercises. So, slip on your muddy clothes, and get out and grow!
Hello, World! From Seed to Pumpkin by Jill McDonald
Kids can learn all about how pumpkins grow in this cheerful and informative board book—with colors, shapes, sizes, and super-simple facts. (“Prize-winning pumpkins can weigh as much as a rhinoceros!”)
Told in easy-to-understand terms alongside bright illustrations of seeds, sprouts, vines, flowers, and—best of all—pumpkin pies and jack-o-lanterns, this sturdy book makes learning easy for little ones and offers useful prompts to help adults engage with the reader on each page.
It’s a perfect way to bring nature and gardening into the busy world of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, where learning never stops.
Listen to the Language of Trees: A Story of How Forest Communicate Underground by Tera Kelley, illustrated by Marie Hermansson
This captivating book explores the real connection and communication that runs underground between trees in the forest. The well-researched details about trees’ own social network will help readers see that the natural world’s survival depends on staying connected and helping others―just like us!
A Seed Is Sleepy by Dianna Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long
Turn each page to explore the amazing world of these garden wonders through watercolor illustrations that bring to life nature landscapes filled with seeds, flowers, plants, leaves, and trees.
A Seed is the Start by Melissa Stewart
Meet seeds that pop, hop, creep, and explode in this vividly illustrated introduction to the simplest concepts of botany. The story, which is perfect for elementary school Common Core learning, carefully highlights the many ways that seeds get from here to there, engaging children’s curiosity with strong action verbs. Stunning photographs with fact-packed captions provide supporting details, explaining the role of seed features and functions in creating new generations of plants. Complete with an illustrated glossary and back matter featuring more resources, this book inspires wonder as it encourages budding botanists of all ages to look with new eyes at plants and their seeds.
Trees, Leaves, Flowers and Seeds: A Visual Encyclopedia of the Plant Kingdom
Have you ever wondered which plants eat insects? Or how cacti store water? How about which flowers look like bees? Or where is the tallest tree in the world? If you find yourself seeking the answers to these quirky questions and so many more, then Trees, Leaves, Flowers & Seeds may be the book for you!
Explore the incredible world of plants, from the smallest seeds to the tallest trees, whilst you discover all about the weirdest, smelliest and deadliest flowers on our planet, with this engaging encyclopedia for children aged 9-12.
Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal
Explore the secret realm beneath the dirt that brings the world of nature to life: Follow a young girl and her grandmother on a journey through the year planning, planting, and harvesting their garden—and learn about what’s happening in the dirt to help make it all happen.
Up in the garden, the world is full of green—leaves and sprouts, growing vegetables, ripening fruit. But down in the dirt exists a busy world—earthworms dig, snakes hunt, skunks burrow—populated by all the creatures that make a garden their home.
What’s Inside a Flower? by Rachel Ignotofsky
Budding backyard scientists can start exploring their world with this stunning introduction to these flowery show-stoppers–from seeds to roots to blooms. Learning how flowers grow gives kids beautiful building blocks of science and inquiry.
In the launch of a new nonfiction picture book series, Rachel Ignotofsky’s distinctive art style and engaging, informative text clearly answers any questions a child (or adult) could have about flowers.
2025 is my tenth year participating in the Blogging A to Z Challenge! This year, I chose as my theme: Fact Finders Club: Nonfiction for Curious Kids with a focus on providing book lists focused on all types of nonfiction books for readers from birth to teens. Each letter of the alphabet will focus on different topics and will provide twelve titles on each list. Nonfiction is having a heyday in children’s literature and if you think it’s dry and boring, then I implore you to take a look at these amazing suggestions! Stop by daily to check out the new books and other posts that I’ll be sharing in April.
