Lonely Planet Backyard Explorer

Backyard Explorer is a Lonely Planet journal and activity book for lower elementary kids. I think kids as young as five would enjoy doing the projects along with a little help from a parent, as would kids all the way up through age 10 or 11, who could do it on their own.

This book would make a nice gift for kids who like to make journals and observations of their neighborhood. It only has four colors, but it includes a stretchy bookmark to find your place. For kids who love to do a lot of writing or drawing, there isn’t a lot of space to do your own thing, but it does have neat suggestions for projects and things to look for where you live. It’s probably best for city kids, given the things they want you to find.

One of my favorite pages is called “Identi-Kitty,” where there are pictures of four cats with name tags that you can fill in with information about your neighborhood cats. I could use the data from this page to try to find or avoid a cat as it tells where they are most often found and what they look like. I think it will be fun to go back and read this journal when I am older and remember where I lived and the cats that lived there, too!