Ah, May…the month of celebrating moms, first visits to the lake or pool, last days of school for some lucky kiddos, and gardens just starting to bloom with those colorful, gorgeous harbingers of summer—flowers.

In celebration of May and all it has to offer, I turn my focus today to From Bulb to Tulip (cover pictured). It’s the perfect book to help usher in the month. You can share this one with all those students who are bursting at the seams to get their summer started.

From Bulb to Tulip takes readers through all the steps of a flower’s life cycle. We start off viewing bins holding bulbs for all sorts of tulips, from red-and-yellow blooms to delicate, soft pink-and-white flowers. We then see a gardener gently placing a bulb in rich brown dirt. The bulbs are watered, go through a looong winter (cold temps are necessary for tulips to blossom!), send up fragile green leaves, start to bud, and, finally, bloom.

Bi-level text lets readers choose how many details they want to learn about tulips, with the first line on each page telling a streamlined story and the lines just below that getting into the nitty-gritty. Bolded glossary terms include words like bulbs, roots, climates, and energy, and sequencing words from first and next to then and finally let readers know where they are in the story.

I hope you enjoy From Bulb to Tulip, and I hope young readers love it too. It’s sure to get you in a summery frame of mind—and, if mild temps haven’t quite come to your parts yet, just take a look at the beautiful photos to go on a quick and lovely mental vacation!