No child can walk through a puddle of mud without a gigantic smile, and while the stuff might be the spring-time bane of grownups, children just love mud. Muddy Boots targets kids and families who value outdoor exploration and grandparents who long for their grandchildren to have the same unfettered time in nature as they did. The book features a wide range of hands-on activities for kids, including mud play, forts, animal tracking and forest wisdom, foraging, insects and worms, bird watching and bird feeding, and many small things for kids to make. Although not primarily about mud, the activities do encourage all hands to get dirty as they explore the world around them.

By Liza Gardner Walsh