An Inquiry of the Outdoors: Contemporary Children’s Picture Books that Feature the Outdoors

BY KATHRYN CAPRINO

How are humans and the outdoors connected? This inquiry question has been answered more acutely for some during COVID. Whereas I am grateful that I could spend time outside daily during quarantine, taking walks with my little boy and rekindling my passion for running, I know many others - for a myriad reasons - were trapped indoors. 

In this post, I share three contemporary children’s picture books that will help young readers answer the inquiry question: How are humans and the outdoors connected?

After sharing brief summaries of each text, I provide a few lesson ideas. ​

I was drawn immediately to the cover of Outside In, written by Deborah Underwood and illustrated by Cindy Derby. There was something about the girl and the brightness of Derby’s lines on the cover of this 2021 Caldecott Honor Book that resonated with me. What is revealed within its covers is a powerful story about how humans are often trapped inside. One poignant line even suggests that sometimes we are outside but really we are inside. But the outdoors does not give up on us. It sends little signals - the snail on the kale, the sounds on our windows - to remind us. And, ultimately, the outdoors wins. And we go there.

Watch Underwood and Derby share their ideas about the text in the video below.  

Similar to the power of the outdoors shown in Outside In, the sea in Swashby and the Sea, written by Beth Ferry and illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal, does not relent. In this stunning book about friendship, the sea ensures Captain Swashby and the little girl who has moved into the house next door become friends - despite all of Swashby’s efforts. Just as the outside in Outside In sends constant reminders about its presence, the sea in Swashby rewrites the messages Swashby leaves in the sand. As in Outside In, the outside wins, allowing for a wonderful friendship between an old man and his lively young neighbor. 

The connections between people seen in Swashby and the Sea are echoed, albeit differently, in LeUyen Pham’s Outside, Inside, a book that is about the time of COVID but also about the hope of the outdoors.

Publisher's Book Trailer

Whereas COVID is not mentioned explicitly, the narrator reveals that there was a time when most people went inside. Sharing that humans made the best of their challenging months inside, the text leaves readers with hope of reconnecting with others outside - but not before emphasizing that even though we are all different on the outside, we are all the same on the inside. Echoes of the idea that humans need to be outside seen in Outside In are also seen in Outside, Inside, and this idea that we are all united by something much greater than ourselves links with Swashby and the Sea.

Sharing the Books with Students

Before sharing these three texts with students, pose the inquiry question How are humans and the outdoors connected? Invite them to share the ways in which they feel connected to the outdoors via discussions, written responses, or pictures. 

Next, read the texts to students, providing opportunities for during-text discussions and post-text answering of the inquiry question. Ask students to reveal how each text confirms or alters their previous responses. 

After reading all three texts, ask students to draw, write, or discuss their response to the inquiry question, using their personal experiences and what they thought about as a result of the three picture books. 

Finally, have students engage in an activity that helps them engage with the inquiry question How are humans and the outdoors connected? in personal ways. They may want to create a project that helps keep the outdoors a hospitable place for humans. They might write to the town mayor to share some ideas on roadside trash collection, for example. Other students may pursue a more personal project, such as a drawn or written memoir or children’s picture book about their experiences with being inside and outside throughout the past year. 

Perhaps the best lesson idea I have, however, is to let these texts inspire you and your students to go outside. Take an awe walk to find inspiring objects and return to the classroom to discuss or write about them. Set up an observation log in your classroom so students can track what they noticed about the outdoors. Let students draw or paint the outdoors. Or even better yet, truly be outside with them - not outside but really inside as Outside In warns - and play with them. 

It is my hope that these three contemporary books that provide the opportunity for us to engage in an inquiry of the outdoors inspire us all to move and think and be outside just a bit more.

Kathryn Caprino is a CLA member, on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Children’s Literature, a blogger at katiereviewsbooks.wordpress.com, and an Assistant Professor of PK-12 New Literacies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. You can follow her on Twitter @KCapLiteracy.