Book List of Five Books to Get Kids Exploring Outside
The Children’s Book Review
What to Expect: History, science, exploration, activities, interactive
When the summer comes and the weather is warm, there’s nothing better than getting outside and getting your hands dirty. From looking and listening to tasting, touching, and smelling, there is much to explore and experience when you get out into nature!
Here are five kids’ books to help inspire your summer explorations:
Live Like a Hunter Gatherer
Written by Naomi Walmsley
Illustrated by Mia Underwood
Ages 7+ | 56 Pages
Publisher: Button Books | ISBN: 9781787081208
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live out in nature without the help of modern technology? Live Like a Hunter Gatherer is your field guide to stone-age survival! Written by an expert in stone-age history who teaches survival crafts professionally, this book combines historical facts with a compelling storyline about a fictional stone-age girl and lots of hands-on experiments. From building a woodland shelter to making your own pemmican and arrowheads, this book provides everything you need to spend your summer getting up close and personal with nature—stone-age style.
Buy the Book
The Collectors
Written and Illustrated by Alice Feagan
Ages 3+ | 32 Pages
Publisher: Kids Can Press | ISBN: 9781525302046
Winslow and Rosie are building their own magnificent collection of treasures from the natural world, and they only need one more item to make it complete. They need something extraordinary—so they set off on a quest, into the forest and up the mountain. The trouble is, nothing they find seems quite right to fill that final space. The rainbow is too far away. The gold nugget is too deep in the lake. The woodpecker feather is too high up. Returning home empty-handed, the girls come to realize that they need a new way to think about collecting.
The Collectors is not just a fun nature adventure; it’s also a story about teamwork, perseverance, thinking outside the box, and engaging with the world creatively.
Buy the Book
The Camping Trip
Written and Illustrated by Jennifer K. Mann
Ages 3+ | 56 Pages
Publisher: Candlewick Press | ISBN: 9781536207361
Camping is one of the best bits of the summer vacation. However, if you’ve never been camping, the excitement might be tinged with a hint of anxiety – there’s a lot to learn! That’s what Ernestine discovers on her first camping trip. Luckily, Ernestine has Aunt Jackie and Cousin Samantha to help her feel comfortable around all these new experiences. From learning how to pitch a tent to tasting smores for the first time, The Camping Trip helps readers know what to expect – and what to look forward to. With comic-style illustrations and lots of labels and lists, the story provides a comforting blueprint for the best camping trip ever.
Buy the Book
What’s in Your Pocket?
Written by Heather L. Montgomery
Illustrated by Maribel Lechuga
Ages 4+ | 48 Pages
Publisher: Charlesbridge | ISBN: 9781623541224
Kids nearly always have something “interesting” in their pockets—especially when they’ve been exploring nature!
Charles collected beetles and interesting shells. Mary filled her pockets with bones and skeletons from the beach. Valerie Jane filled her pocket with worms—her mother was not impressed when they slithered out all over her room! What their slightly disgusted parents didn’t know is that Charles would grow up to be the famous biologist Charles Darwin, Mary would become one of the first paleontologists, Mary Anning, and Valerie Jane would one day be the renowned primatologist Jane Goodall.
What’s in Your Pocket? demonstrates that when we fill our pockets with pieces of nature, we feed our curiosity and drive to collect, observe, and understand. Having pockets full of “things” is the first step to being a great scientist—so, what will you collect this summer?
Buy the Book
What Can You Do With a Rock?
Written by Pat Zietlow Miller
Illustrated by Katie Kath
Ages 3+ | Pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky | ISBN: 9781728217635
What Can You Do With A Rock is all about creativity and discovery. Rocks may look simple, but you can do so many things with them! You can kick it and enjoy seeing how different rocks bounce off the ground as you play. You can drop it to learn how different rocks make different sounds. You can study the fossils and minerals in rocks, use them to build with, or skim them across the water. If you have some rocks nearby, you will never be bored!
Combining knowledge about art, nature, geology, and culture in a single, simple, beautifully illustrated volume, What Can You Do With A Rock is full of suggestions for learning about rocks and having fun with them at the same time.
Buy the Book
The 5 Kids’ Books That Encourage Exploring in the Great Outdoors book list was curated by Dr. Jen Harrison. The header illustration is from The Collectors, written and illustrated by Alice Feagan. Discover more books like these titles by following along with our reviews and articles tagged with History, Science, Exploration, and Interactive.
