Book Review: Fences: A Backyard Story (backyard animals)

Fences: A Backyard Story, by Michael Curran (Independently published, $15, 2023, 297pp) Review by Skye Anderson

A sequel to Tails: A Backyard Story, Fences  is a lovely book for young adults - with hidden education to boot. Though fairly long and slow in the beginning in order to carefully and fully introduce the myriad of animal characters, the tale gradually moves quickly and eventually ties all the loose ends together in the end. 

Love the Names

Munk is a chipmunk; Chaser, a dog. Of course!

Other animals have not-so-obvious names like Ricky the Mockingbird, head of Outdoor Security, Madame Monet the skunk (huh?), Buddy the cat who is head of Indoor Security, and Skip the squirrel. 

The scenes take place largely in the backyard of the Brennan house at 207 Spruce Street, home to parents Wendy and Scott, and their boy Cole who is attacked by a murder of crows, thus alarming the backyard animals and resulting in a committee to find the murderer. It is amazing how the various species can communicate with each other - in English.

The Story

Fences starts off with a big bang - a murder of a crow (and later we read about another 'murder' of crows). We learn where crows spend their nights sleeping and how aunt and uncle crows stick around the nuclear family to help raise the next younger generation. And, perhaps as a play on words, we meet a crow named Usher Poe (the author is from Pennsylvania, near Baltimore, home of Edgar Allen Poe, who wrote about ravens, however).

The Gang on Spruce Street

With a lovely lyrical writing style, author Michael Curran makes learning about animal husbandry fun - but that is not the main goal of Fences. Or perhaps that goal shares the spotlight with suspense and also with lessons of cooperation. Several of the first chapters might be read in a different order because each chapter highlights one named animal, as if only one of a species lived in a particular backyard, with the exception of crows and a pair of squirrels.

You can easily picture not only the various characters but also the action. With humor taking us back to our childhood, Curran writes about childhood as only an observant father can (the boy speeding down the stairs skipped the last four steps - who doesn't remember doing that?).

There is a definite demarkation between day animals and night ones: it is dangerous for day animals to be caught away from home when the sun sets (when our murder takes place).

With only a few punctuation errors, Fences is a book to entice the reader to learn more about crows and other highlighted animals. Unfortunately, a great horned owl is the antagonist, much to the dismay of this reviewer who studied owls in graduate school.

Fences will also entice you to read the first book in the series, Tails, whose review follows this one.