Nature's Day

Gr 1–4—This attractive look at nature attempts a lot. The author covers eight settings ("The Garden," "The Fields"), describing the changes that occur to each throughout four seasons. The result is 32 oversize spreads of painted birds, flowers, animals, and insects. Most enlightening are the "Veg-Patch" pages, which provide labeled illustrations of a large variety of fruits and vegetables, as well as facts about general garden maintenance. "The Pond," "The Forest," "The Garden," and "The Orchard" offer general tips for observing nature, including looking for (but not touching) animal scat. Captions present more detail in addition to the introductory paragraph on each page. Teachers looking for books on seasons will be better served by Dana Meachen Rau's Seasons (Marshall Cavendish, 2010) or Deborah Hodge's Up We Grow (Kids Can, 2010). For more materials on nature observation, readers can try Annette Le Blanc Cate's Look Up!: Bird Watching in Your Own Backyard (Candlewick, 2013).