Why I Write Children’s Books About Nature and the Changing Seasons

There is a particular sound a pile of dry leaves makes when a small child runs straight through the middle of it. If you have heard it, you know the one. Half crunch, half laughter. I’m not sure I have ever heard anything happier.

That sound is where my picture book Autumn began. Children notice things that most of us stopped noticing years ago, and the natural world gives them more to notice than anything else. That is why so many of my children’s books turn to nature and the seasons. With the leaves coming down outside my window this month, it felt like the right time to explain why.

Children Already See the World as a Story

When I was a boy in Leicester, I didn’t have a great deal. I was orphaned during the war and grew up learning how much family and loyalty matter, which you can read more about on my About page. What I did have was the outdoors. A patch of grass, a hedge full of sparrows, a puddle after the rain. To a child, those things are not scenery. They are characters.

I have never forgotten that. A child doesn’t look at a falling leaf and think “deciduous tree.” They wonder if it might be a boat, or a bird, or a spaceship. A good picture book simply gives that instinct somewhere to go.

Autumn: One Tree, Two Imaginations

In Autumn, Bernadet and Jarden sit beneath their favourite tree as the leaves begin to fall. Jarden sees golden spaceships. Bernadet sees the children of mighty trees, returning their gifts to the earth. Neither of them is wrong.

That was the whole point for me. I wanted to write one of those autumn books for kids that doesn’t tell children what to think about the season, but shows them that two people can look at the same thing, see something completely different, and both be right.

One primary school teacher said it opened up a lovely conversation with her Year 1 class about seeing things differently. A parent told me her daughter now checks every leaf on the walk home to decide what it “really” is. As an author, I couldn’t ask for more than that.

Following Nature Through the Whole Year

Autumn isn’t the only season on my shelf. Over the past year I have written a small family of children’s books about nature, and each one follows something very small on a very big journey.

Wildflower is about a tiny flower waking from her winter rest in a mountain valley and reaching for the morning light, until bees and hummingbirds come to visit. Raindrop follows one little drop as it leaves the clouds and rushes through streams and waterfalls, until a goodbye becomes a homecoming in a quiet mountain lake.

Snowflake is Elisa’s story. A special six-sided snowflake lands on her hat and she wants to keep it forever, but as it melts she learns how its water helps the land, the crops and the flowers grow. And The Tree and Boy is a quieter book about a curious boy who learns to slow down in the woods and look closely.

I suspect my engineering background shows in these. I have always wanted to know how things work, and when you stop to think about it, the journey of a raindrop is a marvellous piece of engineering. But I never want a picture book to feel like a lesson. The science is there for the grown-up to pick up on if the child asks. The story always comes first.

Why Nature Stories Are Worth Reading Aloud

I’m a storyteller, not a scientist, but the research supports what most parents already feel in their bones. The National Literacy Trust has found that when children enjoy reading and do it daily in their free time, their reading skills, wellbeing, empathy and confidence all benefit, and it encourages more adults to read aloud to the young people in their lives. Meanwhile, a study led by The Wildlife Trusts found that time connecting with nature raised children’s enjoyment, wellbeing and health, and even had a positive effect on their education, as Countryfile reported.

I like to think a good nature story sits somewhere between those two things. You share it as one of their bedtime stories, and the next morning the child is at the window, looking for raindrops.

A Few Ways to Share These Stories

Take the book outside. Read Autumn under a real tree if you can, then ask your child what each leaf might be. There are no wrong answers.

Ask “what do you think?” more than “what is it?” The best conversations I have with young readers start with their ideas, not mine.

Let the season choose the book. Wildflower in spring, Raindrop on a wet afternoon, Snowflake when the evenings draw in. These are books for ages 4 to 8, but I have had plenty of grandparents tell me they enjoy them just as much.

For teachers and librarians, I love visiting classrooms in person and online. Sessions run 30 to 45 minutes with a reading and plenty of questions. You can book a school or library visit here.

Where to Find the Books

Autumn, Bird Life and Brother & Sister are available now on Amazon, with the rest of the series arriving very soon. You can see every title, along with my short story collections for ages 5 and up, on the Children’s Books shelf.

And if your child tells you what they see in a falling leaf this autumn, I would genuinely love to hear it. Drop me a line. Those little answers are where my next stories come from.