This year marks the 100th birthday of my favorite children’s book on Spring. Actually, “The Story of the Root-Children” is my favorite young children’s book of all time (much as I also love Margaret Wise Brown’s “Goodnight Moon”).

I think I’ve given “Root Children” to new mom friends twenty or more times. It’s the story of how the souls of the plants (drawn as cherubic baby spirits) are awakened from underground naps by Mother Nature and instructed to sew new, festive clothes for themselves so they can rise up out of the earth as flowers and parade in the most endearing way as soon as the sun warms the earth. This wasn’t a book I knew as a girl; I came upon it through Rudolf Steiner websites when my boys were tots. All the works of author Sibylle von Olfers are favorites at Steiner schools, and once you see this one, you’ll understand why. “You love that sort of book much more than the kids do,” Mr. Chattering says (worn out after being dragged to too many Steiner school open houses). Perhaps so. But if a book uplifts the mother’s spirit while also amusing the children, so much the better. In fact, I say, “Hallelujah!”

“Sibylle von Olfers was born in Methgeten Castle in East Prussia in 1881 and died in Lübeck in 1916,” according to this German book website. “At an early age she had art lessons and was supported in her interest in art by her aunt, the painter and writer Marie von Olfers. At the age of 24 she became a nun in the Order of St. Elizabeth and continued her artistic training there.” Her work has a spiritual understanding of the earth and its cycles that I know you’ll appreciate.