By Cyrisse Jaffee

Get ready for spring with these children’s picture books.

This Little Kitty in the Garden by Karen Obuhanych. Knopf

Miss MacDonald Has a Farm by Kalee Gwarjanski. Illustrated by Elizabet Vukovic. Doubleday

Gifts from Georgia’s Garden by Lisa Robinson. Illustrated by Hadley Hooper. Holiday House

Join five little kitties as they prepare, plant, and tend a garden in This Little Kitty in the Garden. It’s the lively, colorful illustrations that make this book so appealing. The stylized kitties — gray, ginger, black, tuxedo, and tabby — are created with a mixture of cut paper, colored pencils, and charcoal. Whether they are shown sleeping or climbing or making a mess, they retain the very essence of kitten-ness.

As the kitties romp, the text provides helpful hints about what it takes to make a garden: make room for the starter plants to grow, soften up the soil, remove the weeds, and add water. There are humans, too, but we only see their boots and muddy clothes. Little ones will love watching the kitties play as they learn about plants.

Miss MacDonald, in Miss MacDonald Has a Farm, would no doubt enjoy watching the kitties, too, as she works on her farm — although we don’t see any animals around. Miss MacDonald “loves things that grow,” from lettuce to peas to tomatoes to zucchini and so on. You can sing the text (to the tune, of course, of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”), which includes some clever and sprightly refrains: “With a water-water here, and a drip-drop there/here it bends, there it climbs, everywhere it climbs climbs” and “e-i-e-i-grow!”

The illustrations are bold, full of vibrant color, and fun to explore. Miss MacDonald wears a sun hat, big glasses, and clogs. At the end of the story, she prepares a vegetarian feast for a diverse group of friends. (Despite the story, as the publisher describes it, being “female-forward,” one fervently wishes the main character was a “Ms.” instead of a “Miss”)

The endpapers describe in more detail why MacDonald does each task and how her work enables the garden to grow. There’s also a recipe for a Harvest Vegetable Bake. Despite the naming flaw, the book is a great read-aloud, sing-along story for preschoolers. The additional information provided also makes it an excellent addition to kindergarten and first grade classroom libraries.

In Gifts from Georgia’s Garden, children discover a very special garden — the one created by artist Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico. Known, in part, for her magnificent paintings of flowers “so lush and large that they filled the canvas,” O’Keeffe vows to “make even busy New Yorkers take the time to see what I see of flowers.” However, she soon leaves the city for the wide-open spaces of the Southwest. Remembering growing up on a Wisconsin farm, she plants a sustainable garden of vegetables and fruit trees that still flourish today. Like Miss MacDonald, she makes delicious dinners for her friends with the harvest. She also sews her own clothing and grinds grain for homemade bread. All the while, she paints, leaving an unparalleled legacy of art. “The art of caretaking — of her home and her garden — nourished Georgia’s art-making,” the author notes.

The lovely illustrations, contrasting the oranges and yellows with the greens and blues of the produce, complement the text and, at times, mimic O’Keeffe’s style. Because the narrative tries to encompass the story of O’Keeffe’s garden as well as her life and art, it is occasionally clunky. It’s not clear, for instance, until you read the back matter, that it’s her art and her actual garden that are the “gifts from Georgia’s garden.” It would also have been worth noting that O’Keeffe’s friend, artist and Native American arts advocate Maria Chabot, helped develop the site. And, although the author mentions her hiring “members of the community to help with her household,” one wishes that local gardener Estiben Suazo, who worked for O’Keeffe supervising the garden (something his grandchildren continue to do to this day), was also named.

Still, not every picture book biography, especially an unusual one such as this, can include every detail. This narrative adds a welcome new perspective on the accomplishments of Georgia O’Keeffe. Not only do children get to know the artist, they also learn about gardening. And the concept of homemaking as art is as revolutionary as Georgia O’Keeffe herself.

Cyrisse Jaffee is a former children’s and YA librarian, children’s book editor, and a creator of educational materials for WGBH. She holds a master’s degree in Library Science from Simmons College and lives in Newton, MA.