This morning while I was standing near my colorful bookcases I was thinking up ideas for all these cutesy springtime blogposts I could write up and take pictures for. I had a bunch of good ideas so a few minutes ago when I sat down to write, I opened the window and prepared to write about springtime and flowers and baby animals (well, actually, I hadn’t yet had a brilliant baby animal idea but I was working on it).

The only problem?

Outside my house, the weather is not very cheerful or picturesquely springy. I’m currently failing to have the ability to write about the approaching springtime season when outside my window it is bazar weirdness.

Let me explain. No apple blossoms festoon the trees, and I’m wondering if the sad lawn will have any chance at life at all this year. The day is the furthest thing from cheerfully colorful. Normally that’s alright, but today our wonderfully vibrant blue sky is hidden from view by groggy clouds moping about in the sky.

A day or two ago it was hot and felt like summer. Today the weather has switched back to thinking it is winter.

But not to worry! We’ve got more wind than we ever do in winter! Or summer, for that matter. It is a nasty wind that blows dust and dirt everywhere. Earlier, there was so much dust being blown about in the distance that I couldn’t clearly see the houses down the street. It got me to thinking that maybe I should do some looking and find a book about the dust bowl. (If you know of any, let me know in the comments!)

To make things weirder, it started snowing a minute ago. At this point I’m just confused. I don’t even want to go outside because I’m weirded out by the arrival of “springtime”.  It’s kinda like all the seasons got together at the beginning of the week for a meeting. Together they sorted out their weirdest traits and dumped them on us. I’m glad that Easter is in April this year so hopefully the weather can decide what it’s up to (but it probably won’t).

The snow has stopped. I just checked. Phew!

Since I’m not feeling motivated to write about the Penderwicks in their picture-perfect spring or that beautiful and happy cover on Brown Girl Dreaming, I decided to make a list of books with unusual weather.

FYI, because I’m sure you absolutely care about what’s happening outside my window, the snow has started again. And it’s still windy. And dusty. How does that even work — snow and dust together? It doesn’t even seem logical to me! Do explain. . . someone?

Anyways. Back to books.

The first books with bad weather that I thought of were the Wrinkle in Time quintet. Of the four I’ve read so far, all four have started out with strange weather. In each one the characters note that the weather is strange and unusual for the time of year. One time it’s raining and windy, other time it’s too cold, in another it’s not cold enough and there hasn’t been enough snow. I really like the way the weather plays into these books. Because the strange weather is one of the first things you read about, the tone is set for the story, and you have a feeling that things are not quite as they should be. It’s an interesting foreshadowing of the confused and befuddled state of time and space the Murrays are facing.

I’m putting The Hunger Games and Catching Fire on this list because while the tributes are in the arena, the gamemakers are controlling the weather and adding strange weather elements to make the games more interesting. That whole arena in Catching Fire is like an extreme overload of weather weirdness.

So, at this point I’ve established that I’m either in an arena controlled by Plutarch or I’m going to have to travel through space and time to save the world or my family members. Honestly, I don’t think I’m prepared for this!

I’m honestly not sure how many people know about the Girl Who Could Fly series. Sometimes I think it’s popular, and other times I’m just not sure. Personally, I loved the first one and really enjoyed the second one too. I was so excited for the third one when it came out, but it didn’t live up to my hopeful expectations. I have a lot of opinions about that third one, but right now I’m just going to talk about the weather in this middle grade series. In all three books the weather just seems a bit off. It’s a bit like the Wrinkle in Time books, because you can sense that something isn’t right because of the uneasy weather. And besides, this one had to make the list because there’s a set of twins who can control the weather, and what’s cooler than that?

The weather that Joe Mack faces in Last of the Breed is absolutely wild. Spending however much time in the wilderness of Siberia gives Joe Mack plenty of good reason to complain about the weather he takes on. And let’s just take a second to give him a round of applause, because really, he faced that weather like a pro!

What’s your 2021 spring starting out like regarding the weather? If you have any great stories about strange weather, tell me about it in the comments! And if you have any book suggestions with terrible weather, add that in the comments below as well! I love getting book suggestions so don’t hesitate to through suggestions out there.

(And by the way, the snow has stopped again. And even better, the wind is dying down. . . Oh, wait — I just jinxed it and now it’s starting back up.)