Here are our favorite children’s books to read year round! Exposing children to both fiction and nonfiction stories about the year can help them develop an understanding of days, weeks, months, and seasons!

With the start of a new year, I’d love to share our  books that we have by our nature table and seasonal book area all year. They each present the year in a different way~ through nature, farm life, poetry or silly rhymes.

At the start of a new season, not only do we exchange our seasonal books, but we also read the poems and pages about the newest season from some of the books in this collection.  And at the beginning of a new month, we’ll read poems having to do with the current month from many of these books! We just love reading these over and over throughout the year!  (This post contains affiliate links. Thank you so very much for your support!)

9 Children’s Books to Read Year Round

The Year At Maple Hill Farm by Alice & Martin Provensen

This is one of my favorite books! I love how it goes through the seasons and months and how the seasonal changes affect animals and life on a farm.  (They also have Our Animal Friends At Maple Hill Farm which  is equally wonderful).

Around the Year: A Picture Book by Elsa Beskow

This little book is filled with cute little poems about each month of the year. I adore the illustrations!

Chicken Soup with Rice: A Book of Months by Maurice Sendak

Here’s a fun little book which we love reading together~ lots of rhyming! Lucy and Theo always chime in at the end of each page when we read the chicken soup with rice verses.

Old Bear by Kevin Henkes

 In this story Old Bear is asleep for winter, but dreaming of all the special things in each season. He finally awakens to a beautiful spring day! This book is perfect for illustrating the circle of seasons to young children.

The Seasons of Arnold’s Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons

 Through the eyes of a little boy children are shown the changes of an apple tree through the seasons. Another wonderful book for showing the changes throughout the seasons!

A Child’s Calendar by John Updike

 It’s always important to expose children to various genres of writing. This is a great book full of poetry! Each poem is  dedicated to a month of the year. The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous! 

A Busy Year by Leo Lionni

 We LOVE Leo Lionni books! (Swimmy and A Color of His Own are two of our favorites.) This story shows the changes of a tree through the seasons with two cute little mice as the main characters!

Once Around the Sun by Bobbi Katz

Here’s another book of poetry! The poems reflect special things to children for each month of the year. I find Lucy really relates to many of the verses.

Long Night Moon by Cynthia Rylant

 Here’s a book by another one of our favorite authors, Cynthia Rylant. (Have you read The Relatives Came or any of the Henry and Mudge books? Those are all by her as well!)  This book is based on an old Native American tradition of naming each full moon. My absolute favorite things about this book are the illustrations. I find myself just staring at them over and over. Just beautiful!

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I know there must be more great books about the year out there. I would love to hear your favorites!