Read Spring Surprises free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Anna Jane Hays's Spring Surprises is a bouncy rhyming book for 5 year olds about the day spring finally arrives.
It opens with a shout. Wake up, spring is here, and frosty winter can say goodbye! Then it's straight outside, with blue sky, kites in the wind and a bear cub coming out to play.
The lines are short and they rhyme in pairs, so it's a lovely one to read aloud.
There's so much to spot. Buds opening into flowers. Mud pies baking on rocks. Pollywogs in the pond (tadpoles, to most of us) turning into frogs. A duckling learning to swim while his mum looks on, very proud.
Then come the babies. Yellow chicks, a calf, a kid that kicks and a woolly little lamb. Who doesn't love a parade of baby animals?
It winds down gently, with the sun staying up late and the stars coming out, so it works at bedtime too.
If your reader loves being outdoors and checking the pond for frogs, they'll recognise all of it.
For more baby animals out exploring in the fresh air, try The Shy Little Kitten, where six kittens tumble onto the grass and meet a mole, a puppy and a squirrel on the way to a farm picnic.
A library hand-picked by an English teacher, delivered through a calm, ad-free app. If your child already loves reading, we keep up.
7-day free trial. Then £7.99/month.
