UNDER THE GARDEN GATE

Thistle looks at creatures in the backyard in this picture-book collection of rhymes about wildlife.

Red is a white-footed mouse who got adopted as an indoor mouse. Groundhog Woodrow is minding his own business when a gust of wind scares him back under the backyard shed. An ode to a mole reveals that the small nose sticking out of the dirt belongs to Mr. Snufflepuss: “The leaves they start to rustle, then a little snout pokes out. / He’s rummaging the forest floor for whatever is about.” Great blue herons, red-tailed hawks, deer, squirrels, and more are celebrated in short poems that describe small moments in the life of a backyard. The verses scan well, mostly fitting into a standard scansion and using common rhymes, easily understandable for emergent readers. Some vocabulary words (including louse, magnolia, and sauntered) may help readers stretch without ever losing sight of the subject of the poem. Thistle’s crayon illustrations vary in complexity; the great blue heron is drawn with beautiful detail, while Bruce the bat is lightly sketched with no details at all. The crayon medium makes the artist’s work feel inconsistent, with some well-blended illustrations alongside others that use simple geometric shapes for the basis of the animals.

The repeated phrases and solid poetry are more likely to engage young readers than the drawings.