This is a new book, Jo MacDonald Saw a Pond, and you can probably guess that it’s a riff on the Old MacDonald Had a Farm. Jo is actually Old MacDonald’s granddaughter. And she’s introducing little ones to the animals and plants and insects that might be part of a pond ecosystem. So with that book I hope to in a playful, way just share with kids information about the natural world. Again with Old MacDonald Had a Farm they learn about farm animals in a very playful way.
With the Jo MacDonald Saw a Pond book, they get to learn about wild animals but also about the pond as an ecosystem that all of these animals are supported by this area, by this body of water, and they help to support one and other. And I had a great time doing the back matter in the book. It’s factual information about the different animals, activities that parents and children can do together or teachers and children can do.
And with the back matter I hope to make it interesting for parents but also for older kids — that I wanted to make it a book that the kids could grow with. That they could first do the song and listen to the book. And then they could read it on their own, and then they could start reading the back matter and learn more about the animals and other things that are part of the ecosystem.