Click Here To Purchase From Amazon In My Backyard

ISBN: 978-0-9777423-1-8

Publisher: Sylvan Dell Publishing

There’s a lot of learning going on in Valerie Giosgas’ In My Backyard. Rhyming clips introduce children to counting from one to ten and common backyard animals. They’ll learn the names for baby animals and other interesting traits.

The back matter includes a lot of practical information for spotting animals in suburbia and caring for wild animals in general. There’s also a memory game that you can access from the publisher’s website.

Parents and teachers will appreciate the book’s purpose, but the kids will enjoy the rhymes and the pictures. They won’t care about the science or math that they’re learning through osmosis.

Giogas does a good job of producing prose that’s easy to read aloud. The rhythm is faithful, almost. Only one line tripped me up. Katerine Zecca’s illustrations are warm with a just the right bit of humor—they’re faithful to the subject, but they don’t take themselves too seriously.

Sylvan Dell Publishing is one of my favorite children’s publishers—you will never go wrong with one of their books.