Out On The Trail
by Bonnie Morgan
Running the Goat Books & Broadsides, 2025
ISBN 9781998802241
12.99, 29 pp, ages 3 – 8
runningthegoat.com
Using the familiar pattern popularized by Bill Martin Jr.’s Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, this book uses the phrase “What do I see?” as the author encourages the reader to look carefully at beautifully illustrated landscapes and notice familiar objects and experiences. Each page is colourfully filled with the details of nature one would experience on an outdoor walk. As a read-aloud, the book contains numerous wordless pages perfect for engaging conversations between the reader and listener. The easy to remember rhyming patterns lend themselves well to recall and will be read easily by beginning readers. On this imagined walk, the landscapes of Newfoundland and Labrador are depicted in simple, easily accessible illustrations and words.
Classroom Connections: This is a perfect book for children to experience as a read-aloud, providing numerous opportunities for children to observe, name, and imagine the experiences they might have in similar landscapes. With its repetitive pattern and easy-to-read large font, it’s also a suitable book for beginning readers. Students could be encouraged to make a class book, where they imagine and illustrate their own outdoor landscapes and incorporate the appropriate rhyming couplets. The book also has directional words like up, down, ahead, behind, etc., which are useful for activities and games where students’ oral language skills are developed as they describe where objects are located.
Review by Betty Schultze.
This review is featured in Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Fall 2025 issue.
