Our Great Big Backyard

A family road trip through several national parks transforms young Jane's feelings about missing out on a summer of online fun with her friends."There's absolutely nothing to see here," Jane emails fretfully as her family drives through the scenic Smoky Mountains and canoes past alligators and manatees in the Everglades. But once her dad gets her to put the tablet away and look through a telescope at the night skies over Big Bend National Park, her attitude transforms: "OH WOW!" Soon she's tiptoeing over the Grand Canyon's Skywalk like an acrobat, playing pirate on a raft down the Colorado River, scouting out "Mountain lions, buffalo, and bears. Oh my!" in Yellowstone--and, discovering that she's misplaced her electronic device, sending written postcards to her friends from Yosemite. Furthermore, once back home, what better way to debrief than a backyard cookout under the stars? Giving blonde Jane and the rest of her white family broad, pleasant features, Rogers sends them smiling and singing their way through a succession of natural wonders, with bears and bald eagles, footnotes (adult supervision required on the Skywalk, for instance), and only a few fellow, occasionally diverse tourists in the background. Endpaper maps track the long itinerary, and a (select) list of other national parks and sites in each state offers more destinations.Produced to celebrate the National Park Service's upcoming centenary, a breezy invitation to prospective travelers to "get out there!" (Picture book. 6-8) COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2016

Gr 1-3-It would be a rare child who enjoys the thinly disguised lesson at the heart of this ostensible celebration of the National Park Service's 100th anniversary. Jane and her friends are looking forward to spending their summer playing with their electronic devices. Predictably enough, when Jane's parents tell her that she will instead be going on a family road trip to visit national parks, she pouts and spends the first part of the journey glued to various screens. A conveniently timed meteor shower prompts a rapid turnabout, and Jane learns to appreciate the great outdoors. Told in the first person, the narration is at times cringe-inducing-Jane's friends are her "crew," and their plans for the summer are "awesome!" and super-duper!"-and at other times simply unbelievable: "Then, bless my lucky stars, a meteor shower lit up the sky like fireworks-brighter than any screen I had ever seen." The illustrations do little to save the day. Too often, the national parks that are purportedly this volume's raison d'etre simply don't inspire: the Grand Canyon, which shares a spread with a desert scene, looks flat and small in its cramped quarters, while Old Faithful, inexplicably portrayed as a rocket from one of Jane's video games, looks unimpressive behind a fence that doesn't exist in actuality. The characters come across as two-dimensional, wearing remarkably similar facial expressions-mostly grins-from spread to spread. Particularly worrisome is the illustration of Jane and her brother admiring a pair of bear cubs at close range-extremely dangerous behavior. VERDICT Save your budget for one of the other titles about the national park system that are timed for the centennial.-Eileen Makoff, P.S. 90 Edna Cohen School, NY

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