Lynne Plourde has vivid memories of childhood squabbles with her sister and brothers. As a mother of three, she has experienced this rivalry from a parent’s perspective too. She put these incidents and the feelings they evoked to good use in creating “Spring’s Sprung,” the third volume in her series of children’s books celebrating the four seasons.

The Winthrop author will read from “Spring’s Sprung” and sign copies of her new book at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, March 30, at Borders and at 1:30 p.m. the same day at the Maine Discovery Museum in Bangor. Her books also will be on sale.

The long-awaited sequel to “Wild Child” and “Winter Waits,” “Spring’s Sprung” opens with Mother Earth attempting to rouse her peacefully sleeping daughters – March, April and May – from their slumber. At first, like many children on school days, they won’t even budge. Then once they’re up and about, also like many children, they bicker about everything.

An even deeper issue lies behind the spats. Each sister wants to believe that she is the mom’s favorite daughter, loved better than all the rest. Pretty soon their faces are twisted into sneers and pouts with May going off to cry. Fortunately, Mother Earth knows how to calm her frantic children down.

By the time the story ends, they are dancing together, holding hands, joyously going about their task of waking up in the world.

Plourde’s words, coupled with New York illustrator Greg Couch’s artwork, deftly conveys the joyful buoyancy of the arrival of spring.

Candy Emlen, director of the Southwest Harbor Library and former children’s librarian there, has used Plourde’s books “Moose, Of Course!” and “Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud” with great success in story times.

“She has a nice way with words. She needs very few words to get across her humor,” Emlen observed. “She’s subtle. She doesn’t belabor the point. She writes books you can read aloud or listen to again and again and still enjoy.”

Recently, Plourde spent four days on a Midwest publicity tour. She found some people were buying “Spring’s Sprung” as Mother’s Day gifts. She said they told her the book’s line “A mother’s heart is

big enough to grow and grow, to stretch and stretch. The truth – I love you ALL the best” sparked memories of their own childhoods and child-rearing days.

Emlen sees Plourde’s refusal to fall into a rut as one of the author’s greatest strengths.

“She writes such a wide variety of books. And they’re all appealing,” the librarian noted.

A Skowhegan native, it took Plourde 13 years to get her first book published. Since then her career took off and six books since have been published and ten are under contract. In a way, she’s almost become a victim of her own success. Related activities now take up so much of her time, there’s little left over for actual writing.

Plourde teaches a college course on writing for children. She also visits many schools to speak and inspire kids. “If I can convince one Maine young person that it’s possible to grow up to be an author then I have done my job.”

Plourde says she didn’t intend initially for “Wild Child” to develop into a series. Fortunately, her readers had other ideas. They insisted that she move on to the other seasons. Seeking to maintain novelty in a serial format, Plourde created different characters and relationships for each book.

When asked about the future, Plourde said she plans “to keep making images with words, to keep myself surprised with words and stories, and to keep getting better and better at what I do.”