Great Children’s Literature: A Handful of Sunshine


A few years ago, we received A Handful of Sunshineby Melanie Eclare for my daughter’s birthday. This delightful gardening book follows the life of a gigantic sunflower grown by Tilda. Real photographs of Tilda’s sunflower growing experience accompany the text of A Handful of Sunshine. I particularly like Tilda’s sense of style with her rubber boots and striped sweater, as she digs and plants in the garden. She climbs a ladder to reach her sunflower head and discovers a toad in the garden. In the end, she saves the seeds from the sunflower she grew to plant next season. The end page of the book shows a simple time line in the life cycle of a sunflower. Planting sunflowers after reading A Handful of Sunshineis a natural extension to this great gardening book for children.

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2 Comments

  1. Thank you for this article…I’m checking them out of the library today! Any ideas on good books about raising farm animals?

  2. All of the titles I know are fictional for farm animals, although Gail Gibbons writes very informative non-fictions works, such as Milk Cow. In my opinion, her books have too much information in them; however, this is ok if you don’t read it all in one sitting. Her books are best explored, following the child’s lead.

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