This charming and highly original book follows a child's path on a walk to and through a park. Photographs accent the walk's highlights -- such as blossoms on a tree, flowers growing through a fence, a grassy hillside for rolling down, clouds in the sky, a friendly dog, rain splashing in puddles, and much more -- linking them with the simple first-person narrative text. Little eyes are drawn from page to page by a child's doodle, a green line that might just be the end of a stick being dragged along the ground throughout the walk. This simple idea, beautifully presented through stunning photography and graphic design, not only provides much food for discussion but also stimulates children to look at the everyday wonders around them and use their imaginations.

In The Green Line, readers tag along with the narrator for a walk through the park, viewing the walk directly from the narrator’s viewpoint. A simple lime green line loops and swirls across photographs of real outdoor objects your child will recognize. There are pictures of flowers, grass, pavement, wildlife, clouds, bugs, trees, water, and more. The sentences reveal that the narrator is a child, describing his or her experience directly, “In the park I ran and ran and went roly-poly all the way down the hill!”

After reading through the book a few times, your child may notice that the green line represents the narrator. For example, when the narrator thinks he sees a snake in the park, the green line stops its happy looping from the previous page (when he was rolling down the hill and having fun) to a jagged line moving quickly away from the picture of the stick in the grass, which the narrator believes is a snake. This is a great idea for a fun activity you can play with your child. Have your child write a story based on a picture and connect it with a line of their favorite color moving in expressive ways to reflect the story. Perhaps they want to show that they went on a hike recently, so their line may zig zag or terrace upward over a picture of a mountain or forest.