In My Own Backyard

In My Own Backyard by Judi Kurjian, illustrated by David R. Wagner

One morning a child gazes through a bedroom window and watches as amazing things happen. The backyard is transformed to reveal what lived there hundreds, thousands, and millions of years ago. 

Book Details:

• Number of Pages: 32
• Book Size: 10" x 5-1/2"
• Book Type: Paperback
• Recommended Ages: 4-8
• ISBN 10: 0881064440
• ISBN 13: 978-0881064445
• Published 2000

Book Condition:

• This book is brand new and is in perfect condition.

"Geological time collapses into a single morning when a youngster peers through a bedroom window and wonders "how many people had stood where I was, looking at this very same place." Suddenly, the quiet landscape of garden, brook and mountain reverses its usual forward course toward noon and turns backward in time. A succession of scenes--showing, variously, people cutting hay with scythes; a sawmill and oxen teams; settlers; Native Americans celebrating a harvest--carry the reader deep into history. As the time trip gathers speed, the boy sees glaciers, dinosaurs, dense steamy air, swamps swelling into oceans and "a beach with hissing sulphur springs." Wagner's historically accurate oil paintings add to Kurjian's enthusiastic text an otherworldly mood which, along with the author's attention to details, awakens the reader to the awe of geologic time. Included is a time line representing recent history (everything since the woolly mammoth) as a tiny fragment, and matching the names of epoch, periods, and eras to the scenes depicted in the book." - Publishers Weekly

Why We Love It

This is a fabulous book of wonder! Children enjoy this book and it leads them to daydreams about their own backyard!