A Combo Almost As Good As Chocolate and Peanut Butter:

A STROLL THROUGH A STORY! Educators have come up with an ingenious way to use a kid’s innate love of the outdoors as a hook to connect them with and foster a love of reading.

On two separate walks, in two separate local parks, in two separate states, I saw two of my favorite things combined — a path through brilliant foliage combined with a good book! Some genius teachers had the brilliant idea to post story boards with pages from selected books along beautiful wooded walks, all decked out in Autumn colors.

The book posted along the walk in New York had vivid, enlarged illustrations featuring an element visible in the surroundings behind the story board: leaves! The yellow, green, red, orange, and rust leaves clustered around the signs posted along the walks and were reflected in the pictures.

The good news in both these parks? The foliage has not yet peaked, so there is plenty of time to take some young readers on a splendid fall walk and engage their imaginations with a fun story about the Autumn.