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.
Reading this book with my three year-old friend Dano was a blast
because every turn of the page resulted in an animated reaction from him. He
recognized the pictures and loved to name everything and share what his experiences. He liked the lady bug, and telling me that he’d caught one in the
summer. He asked me if Mosley (my dog) was a friend of the black dog in one of the
pictures.
--Audra