A book can help with
For the child who needs an afternoon outdoors, and the parent who needs them to have one.
Time outdoors does something for children that very little else does. It settles them, tires them properly, and gives them a world to poke about in that isn’t organised by anybody. And a child who notices things, a beetle, a change in the light, the first frost, tends to be a calmer and more curious sort of person.
Books are a surprisingly good doorway to it. A story about a child out in the weather sends yours looking for their boots, and the ones that celebrate small discoveries teach a child what to look for. Read one, then go out, even briefly, even in the rain.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.
Out in the weather
For the very youngest it’s the sheer physical pleasure of being outside: puddles, snow, mud, wind.
Peter wakes to find snow everywhere and spends the whole day in it, making tracks, knocking snow off trees, dragging a stick. Nothing much happens, which is exactly the point: it captures a small child’s absorption in the outdoors perfectly. A landmark picture book and still a joy.
or on Bookshop.org
A rainy day indoors turns miserable until a mother and child imagine, then actually go out into, the puddles. It’s a lovely nudge for the days when going out feels like too much effort. Warm, and it usually ends with wellies being fetched.
or on Bookshop.org
Noticing things
Now they can look properly and start naming what they find. These teach a child what to notice.
A family wades through long grass, a river, thick mud and a snowstorm, with a sound for each one that children shout along to. It makes the outdoors an adventure and is enormous fun to act out on an actual walk. A modern classic and a brilliant read-aloud.
or on Bookshop.org
A girl moves to the countryside and, through the turning seasons, builds a friendship with an elderly neighbour over art and the natural world. It’s quiet and beautiful, and it teaches a child to notice how a place changes through the year. By a Cree-Métis author, and gently moving.
or on Bookshop.org
Wild places
Older children can take a longer story about the wild, or a proper guide to finding things out for themselves.
A beautiful, oversized book of spell-poems for the nature words dropping out of children’s dictionaries: acorn, otter, bramble, kingfisher. It’s a book to pore over rather than read straight through, and the paintings are extraordinary. A lovely thing to own, and to take outside.
or on Bookshop.org
A robot washes up on a wild island and has to learn how the natural world works in order to survive, and slowly becomes part of it. It’s a gripping story that’s also full of real observation about animals and seasons. Hugely popular with this age, and a wonderful read-aloud.
or on Bookshop.org
Out in it properly
Older children can hold a whole landscape in their head and something serious about it at the same time. Each of these puts a child somewhere wild and let it matter.
April is taken to a research station on Bear Island for six months and told there are no polar bears left, and then she meets one, starving and stranded. Her plan to get him home is entirely impractical and she does it anyway. Honest about the climate without ever turning into a lecture.
or on Bookshop.org
Julia spends a summer in a Shetland lighthouse while her mother, a marine biologist, hunts for a Greenland shark that may be older than the trees. The sea and the night sky are written beautifully. Her mother slides into a bipolar episode during it, so it helps to know that in advance.
or on Bookshop.org
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Something to do together
A simple outdoor scavenger hunt for your own street or garden, and a page for recording what you found. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
You don’t need woods or mountains for this. A puddle, a patch of grass and a beetle under a stone will do, and the point is unstructured time outside rather than anything organised.
So go out in the weather rather than waiting for a nice day, resist directing the play, and let them get properly muddy. A child who is comfortable outdoors keeps that for life, and it costs nothing.
For you, the grown-up
There’s a companion page for grown-ups over on the main Book Quote Therapy library, with books for adults who need time outdoors.
Read the grown-up version →These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.