Changing Seasons Series by Kenard Pak
Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn was the first book in Kenard Pak’s Changing Seasons series we got and read together. My toddlers are obsessed with dogs, staring out the window and barking at every canine that trots past our house, so they immediately fixated on the big dappled dog featured in the book, pointing and barking at it every time I turned the page. I was tickled by the reaction but just as animated and delighted by everything I was seeing and reading on the page. The series is what it says it is: a reflection on the changing seasons. It includes the aforementioned book and the second book we added to our rotation, Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring; we’ll be picking up Goodbye Autumn, Hello Winter, and the book I currently have on preorder is Goodbye Spring, Hello Summer.
These books are such a great way to mark the shifts in nature both in wilder settings as well as in quaint villages and towns. While the settings are idyllic, the depictions include common objects and sights you can point out in the real world wherever you are. It was such a joy to read about dogwood trees in Goodbye Summer and be able to show my kids the dogwood just outside our window. As mentioned, the girls love to pantomime and we have great fun blowing gusts of stormy wind at each other, swaying our arms like the branches of a tree welcoming a fall breeze, and splish-splashing at puddles on the page. I cannot wait for the new book to arrive just in time for us to celebrate those first hints of summer but, because it’s as fun to anticipate seasons as it is to witness the shift in real time, we happily read the books we’ve got no matter the current season. And that constant of dogs and kids is especially appealing to my own children who seem to understand that these books are connected in some way (honestly, though, it might be because I stack them in the same place out of their reach so they don’t get destroyed by eagerness, ha!).