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30Jan

Animal Books

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized
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I’ve been working through my stash of 2018 nonfiction books and discovered I had a set of animal books. So many great titles!

Cover of book shows a cartoon bug next to three small cartoon bugs.

Bugs Don’t Hug: Six-Legged Parents and Their Kids by Heather Montgomery, illustrated by Stephen Stone (Charlesbridge: 2018). This book about parenting practices of insects has fantastic page turns! On one page we see what human parents do, and on the following page, we see an analogous action that bus take. The illustrations are funny and cartoonish, and there are fascinating short text blocks explaining insect behavior.

Cover of book shows a honeybee flying above a meadow.

The Honeybee by Kirsten Hall, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault (Atheneum: 2018). The rhyming text is fun to read aloud, but the standout of this book is the stunning illustration.

Cover of book shows gorilla, octopus, rhinoceros, and other beasts.

Lovely Beasts: The Surprising Truth by Kate Gardner, illustrated by Heidi Smith (Balzer + Bray: 2018). I love the idea behind this book–taking a common belief about an animal and then turning it on its head. We see a gorilla next to the word “Fierce” but then turn the page to see a gorilla as a tender parent.

Cover of photo shows photo of baby hippo swimming

Saving Fiona: The Story of the World’s Most Famous Hippo by Thane Maynard  (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2018) looks like a picture book but is really more of a middle grade read. Its dense text, written, by the director of the Cincinnati Zoo, and wonderful photographs tell the inspiring story of the birth of a baby hippo and how it survived a dicey beginning when it came prematurely.

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21Nov

The Hen Who Sailed Around the World

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review
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Cover of book shows a photo of a red hen and a sailor on a boat on the sea.In honor of Thanksgiving, today I have a poultry-inspired nonfiction picture book: The Hen Who Sailed Around the World.

This memoir of twenty-something Guirec Soudée’s solo sea journey around the world abounds with pluck and dash, largely because he wasn’t really solo. He shared his boat with his pet hen.

Soudée uses words and photo to tell the story of his three-year voyage with his hen, Monique. The hen provided comic relief in difficult moments, welcome companionship at lonely times, and nutritious eggs when he was iced in for four moths.

I loved the details of how the minutiae of a trip like this works. The author doesn’t shy away from the reasons it could be tough to be taking care of a chicken in the middle of the ocean, but it also becomes clear how meaningful the human-animal interaction was for him.

It was a great decision to use photos to illustrate the book. You are never in danger of forgetting that this was a real-life experience with a real, live person and a real, live chicken.

This book will appeal to animal lovers, to adventure lovers, and to memoir lovers.

The Hen Who Sailed Around the World by Guirec Soudée. Little Brown: 2018.

(Happy Thanksgiving!)

Picture of children surrounding a globe

Alyson Beecher hosts the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at kidlitfrenzy.com. Visit there for more great nonfiction picture books!

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2May

Joan Procter, Dragon Doctor

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Cover of book shows Joan Procter with reptiles on her head, on her shoulders, and in her handJoan Procter, Dragon Doctor tells the story of a self-taught herpetologist who transformed the ways reptiles are displayed in zoos and helped introduce the Komodo Dragon to the Western world. The book starts and ends with proper British tea parties, but since these are parties that Procter participates in, they are also reptile tea parties.

I loved the lively voice and the alliteration in the book–“gawked at the geckos, peered at the pythons, marveled at the monitors.”

The book does an especially good job of making the case for loving reptiles. We see Procter spend time with them, examine them, and love them. I think even the reptile-phobic would be won over by Valdez’ account of Procter’s passion for the creatures.

The back matter includes a couple of entrancing black and white photos of Joan Procter and a hefty bibliography, which includes many newspaper and magazine articles from the 1920s and 1930s.

I found the art by Felicita Sala gorgeous and an easy way into the story. The book has some of my favorite endpapers–a tea table scene, but with reptiles.

This is a book for everyone, not just reptile lovers.

Joan Procter, Dragon Doctor: The Woman Who Loved Reptiles by Patricia Valdez, illustrated by Felicita Sala. Knopf: 2018.

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Alyson Beecher hosts the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at kidlitfrenzy.com. Visit there for more great nonfiction picture books!

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31Jan

Robins: How They Grow Up

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review
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Cover of book shows a parent robin feeding three hungry robin chicks in their nest.Did you know that baby robins’ feathers are covered by a sheath when they first emerge and that the birds have to remove the sheath? Or that robin parents remove the baby’s feces from the nest with their mouths? Robins: How They Grow Up is full of fascinating natural history details like these.

The book is told in the voice of two robin chicks. They chicks themselves, in the form of tiny cartoon drawings, provide further commentary in cartoon-style voice bubbles on every spread of the page. We follow the robin parents as they find their mates, hunt out a safe nesting place, build a nest, and lay their eggs. We see the robin chicks hatch and grow to adulthood. Along the way we meet robins’ predators (and the family loses two of their potential offspring!). We watch the chicks grow and learn how to fly and hunt. In the final spread, we see them join the other robins in flying south for the winter.

The language is accessible, and there are tons of fascinating facts throughout the book.

In the author’s note, Christelow tells about how a robin family built a nest in her gardening shed and how this sent her on the voyage of discovery that led to the book. There’s also a glossary, two pages of answers to questions about robins, and a list of sources.

While you wait for spring to reappear, this is a great book to pull out and read!

I’m looking forward to heading to California later this week, where I’ll present at the California School Librarians Association Conference. I’d love to meet you if you’re there!

Robins: How They Grow Up by Eileen Christelow. (Clairon: 2017).

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Alyson Beecher hosts the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at kidlitfrenzy.com. Visit there for more great nonfiction picture books!

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13Dec

Creature books

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review
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Cover of book shows face of aye-aye

I love Jess Keating’s series “The World of Weird Animals.” I’m not the only one. Recently I checked out Pink is for Blobfish to use in a presentation; many of the pages were stuck together from all the sticky fingers that had loved that book to death. The books are brilliantly designed with compelling photos, deftly-written facts, and insightful thematic links. She’s already announced the third book in the series but I just got the second one from my library. What Makes a Monster examines creatures with a reputation–sometimes deserved, sometimes not, for monstrosity. Along the way I learned lots of cool facts about animals and had a serious think about what I personally consider monstrous. My favorite thing about Keating’s books is that when I’m reading one, I feel absolutely impelled to share it with the people around me. I have to grab my kid or my spouse to show them just this photo, or tell them just this cool fact. The next book is about cuteness. I think I better order it much, much earlier from my library.

My Awesome Summer by P. Mantis is a funny, fact-filled book about praying mantises. The end papers are covered with typical nonfiction sidebars about the science ofCover of book shows praying mantis on a leaf. praying mantises (about how they camouflage, where they originated, how they catch prey, etc.). But the main text of the book masquerades as a journal. It starts “May 17. I was born today! It’s a beautiful, sunny spring day!” We follow along as P. Mantis enthuses over delicious aphids and also eats his siblings, catches prey, evades predatoIrs, and grows bigger and bigger. I learned a lot about praying mantises and enjoyed looking at the world from an insect point of view. It was interesting to read the book next to What Makes a Monster since some of the praying mantis’ habits could be considered monstrous (that whole eating your siblings thing). A really fun book that conveys great nonfiction content.

What Makes a Monster? by Jess Keating, illustrations by Dave DeGrand. Alfred A. Knopf: 2017.

My Awesome Summer by P. Mantis by Paul Meisel. Holiday House: 2017

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I participate every Wednesday in the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at Kid Lit Frenzy.

 

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8Nov

Frida Kahlo and her Animalitos

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Cover of Frida Kahlo and her Animalitos shows Frida Kahlo as a child, painting, surrounded by animalsFrida Kahlo and her Animalitos gives young readers an introduction to the artist’s life and work through the lens of her pets. This is an especially great choice since Kahlo’s animals so often appear in her art. The book opens in a way that will sway any animal lover: “This is the story of a little girl named Frido who grew up to be one of the most famous painters of all time. Frida was special.

“This is also the story of two monkeys, a parrot, three dogs, two turkeys, an eagle, a black cat, and a fawn. They were Frida’s pets, and they were special too.”

The text draws connections between Kahlo’s characteristics and her pets’ characteristics: “Like a cat, Frida was playful.” It would be fun to read this book next to Quick as a Cricket in a unit about similes. The books feel very different in tone, but they use the same literary techniques.

This would also be a great book to pair with Yuyi Morales’ Viva Frida. The dream-like state of Viva Frida is very different from the story-telling here, but the combination of the two books would be a great introduction to an important artist.

John Parra’s illustrations use images and ideas from Kahlo’s paintings but are their own wonderful things. I especially loved the loving way he included details in the art–roller skates under the bed, a paleta man pushing a cart in the background at a city park, books stacked on the floor behind Kahlo’s wheelchair. Every page is a pleasure to explore.

Frida Kahlo and her Animalitos by Monica Brown, illustrated by John Parra. North South Books: 2017.

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I participate every Wednesday in the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at Kid Lit Frenzy.

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5Jul

Rhino in the House

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Rhino strides across the savannah. White-haired woman is in the background standing next to her home.Rhino in the House tells the story of an environmentalist I’d never before heard of. Anna Merz found her retirement to Kenya took an unexpected turn when she began to worry about the safety of the rhinoceroses around her. They were being poached and becoming more and more endangered. So she set up a rhinoceros refuge. This book is about her relationship with an orphaned baby rhino. She cared for it and eventually released it onto the refuge, but it always stayed close to Anna, returning to visit with her and walk with her.

The pencil illustrations in this book are charming, soft rounded edges on the cartoon style showing the warmth and heart of the story. In the back matter, Daniel Kirk talks about how he was having difficulty with the illustrations until he and his son flew to Kenya and spent a week on the refuge. He took photographs and sketched and interviewed a woman who would have been there at the time period of the book so he could get the illustrations right. Illustrations are a key component of nonfiction picture book, and sometimes it’s easy to forget that the illustrators research just as much as the writers do to create an accurate, accessible book for kids.

I loved the endpapers in this book. The front pages show the sun rising on the savannah. The back pages show the sun setting.

Animal-loving kids will adore this book and it will pair well with other stories about activists who protect wild animals. Look, for example, for Me, Jane; A Boy and a Jaguar; and Shark Lady.

Rhino in the House: The True Story of Saving Samra by Daniel Kirk. Abrams: 2017.

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I participate every Wednesday in the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at Kid Lit Frenzy.

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10May

The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review
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Cover of book shows a Great Auk on a rocky shore.There are plenty of dinosaur books that explore the natural history of extinct creatures. But The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk explores, in greater detail and with much greater authority than dinosaur books ever achieve, the natural history of a creature tht went extinct in 1844. It explores with heartbreaking specificity why it went extinct and also what the implications of that extinction have been.

I was fascinated to read about the life cycle of the Great Auk. It lived almost its entire life in the ocean–and was very well suited to that environment–but had to come on shore two months a year to mate and hatch chicks. This was a great disadvantage for a creature evolved to life in the sea. When it was trying to escape a predator  its only defense was “pathetically “running” towards the water about as fast as you can walk. There was little it could do to defend an egg or chick except angrily clack its beak.” So the Great Auk nested on the most remote islands it could find–as long as the islands didn’t require climbing or flying since the Great Auk could do neither.

This strategy worked remarkably well until humans became seafarers. The rush to extinction accelerated when humans began hunting the Great Auk for oil, feathers, and finally as trophies.

Since the Great Auk has become extinct other birds, including puffins, have taken over its habitat. Puffins require soil to dig their burrows, and the Great Auk’s habitat used to be solely rock. But so many Great Auk carcasses were abandoned on their rocky islands during the heyday of Great Auk hunting, that they decomposed into the soil, which now provides puffin burrows.

The back matter includes not only references and resources but also a list of names for the Great Auk in various languages and a list of species that have gone extinct since the Great Auk’s extinction.

Obviously, there are no photographs of the Great Auk, but the digital art relies on museum specimens to get the birds, the chicks, and their eggs right.

This book is a fascinating look at how evolution can both suit a creature to a particular niche and also end up trapping it in an intolerable situation. And it’s a sobering look at the impact human action can have on the world.

The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk by Jan Thornhill. Groundwood Books: 2016.

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I participate every Wednesday in the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at Kid Lit Frenzy.

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22Mar

The Search for Olinguito

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Photo of an animal, the olinguito, in a treetop.The Search for Olinguito: Discovering a New Species is aptly named. Sure, it’s about a big-eyed, cuddly mammal. And the book is full of photos that will make you fall in love with the olinguito. But the emphasis in the book is on the scientific work that went into that discovery.

The book tells the blow-by-blow account of the scientist who first started to suspect that the olinguito might be a separate species and not just a different kind of a mammal the world already knew. Then we watch him assemble a team to test his hypothesis and see how each member of his team plays a specific role. My favorite part of the book was when, after they’d satisfied themselves that they had found a new species, they tried to publish their results:

“They submitted it to a scholarly journal for publication to share the news. A number of experts checked the report, and it was rejected.”

The scientists get back to work and spend another seven years researching and strengthening their argument before their work is finally published.

As I do school visits, I’m always surprised by how fascinated kids are in how long it takes to publish a book. I think this book, with its emphasis on the scientific process, complete with occasional rejection, will fascinate kids, too.

I was fascinated to see that the Source Notes are all from telephone calls the author made to various scientists involved in studying the olinguito.  This book will feel to readers like their own conversation with these scientists.

The Search for Olinguito: Discovering a New Species by Sandra Markle. Millbrook Press: 2017.

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24Aug

Some Bugs for Preschoolers

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Cover of book, showing some bugs in grass.Nonfiction for very, very young readers is tricky. But Angela DiTerlizzi cracks the code in the delightful book Some Bugs. In fewer than 100 words, she gives us a wonderful glimpse of the wide variety of things insects can do.

The wonderful rhymes give the book a feeling of playfulness.

Some bugs sting.

Some bugs bite.

 Some bugs stink.

And some bugs FIGHT!

Simple words and simple predictable rhymes. Yet the scientific concepts conveyed are astonishingly sophisticated: insects have many different shapes and behaviors; insects live all around you; observation is an important scientific skill.

The illustrations match the playfulness of the text. Every insect has big, heart-warming eyes. But they’re also obviously insects. After the main text is over, there is one exuberant spread where every insect shown in the book is labeled by name.

This is a great nonfiction title for preschoolers or for beginning readers.

Some Bugs by Angela DiTerlizzi, illustrated by Brenda Wenzel. Beach Lane Books: 2014.

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I participate in the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at KidLit Frenzy.

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6Jul

Slickety Quick

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Cover of Slickety Quick shows a great white shark swimming in water.Sharks and poetry. What could be better?

In this refreshing book, Skila Brown couples playful, inventive poems with short sidebars about different types of sharks. The poems are in a range of styles. There’s a poem for two voices (about a shark and the remora that cleans it), rhyming poems, shape poems, and poems with a strong rhythmic beat.

The book spotlights thirteen different kinds of sharks. The poetry is the centerpiece. Each poem is in large type and thoughtfully set into the design of the page. The sidebars, each easily digestible at 25 or 30 words, are in small italicized font near the edge of the spread. They’re available if the poetry piques your curiosity, but each poem stands on its own. The digital art is inviting and refreshing.

This would be a great book to share with shark lovers and to lure a reluctant poetry reader. It would pair beautifully with another nonfiction title about sharks like Neighborhood Sharks. With each poem, Brown lures you in and makes you want more, like in this one about the nurse shark:

Two long whiskers–like a frown. Little mustache drips right down.

Vacuums creatures all around,

cleaning up the whole sea town.

Slickety Quick: Poems about Sharks by Skila Brown, illustrated by Bob Kolar. Candlewick: 2016

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I participate in the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at Kid Lit Frenzy. Join us!

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18Nov

Doyli to the Rescue

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Cover of book, with photo of Doyli holding a baby monkey.Babies! Monkeys! Girls!  This true life story of a Peruvian tween who works with her family to save monkeys will win over any kid or adult who picks it up. It’s heart-tugging, inspiring, amazing!

The story opens with a sympathetic portrait of a native Indian hunter who is looking for meat to feed his family. Unfortunately, his hunt leaves a monkey orphaned. He delivers the baby monkey to Doyli’s family. From there, the rest of the story is told from Doyli’s point of view. We follow her from the moment she wakes up in the morning until she goes to bed. We see her helping feed and care for the animals, taking a dangerous canoe ride to school, and doing daily chores without aid of plumbing or electricity. In the exciting climax of the book, she discovers a vendor selling monkeys in a local market and sets in motion the actions that eventually leads to his arrest and the release of the captive monkeys.

Catherine Burnham was a documentary photographer before she became a writer, and the book has fantastic photos that show Doyli in her home and in her community. I loved the back matter essay where Burnham tells the story of how she and her family managed to maneuver things so they could meet Doyli and her family while they were on vacation in Peru.

There is a lot of text in the book, too much for younger or newer readers, but this is a title that will inspire middle grade readers and cause many sighs of longing: “Why can’t we move to the Amazon?”

Burnham’s blogpost about meeting Doyli is here and she offers a teacher’s guide here.

Doyli to the Rescue: Saving Baby Monkeys in the Amazon  by Cathleen Burnham. Crickhollow Books: 2015(Be

(Be sure to check out Kid Lit Frenzy today and every Wednesday for more nonfiction picture book recommendations.)

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19Oct

Trapped!

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Cover of book Trapped! A Whale's Rescue“The huge humpback whale dips and dives. Her sleek black sides shimmering, she spyhops, lobtails, flashes her flukes.” Robert Burleigh’s vivid language drew me into his book. Quickly, his beautiful descriptions of everyday life in the sea shift into a suspense filled drama. The humpback whale becomes entangled with fishing nets. Can she survive?

We see humans acting humanely but without denying the wildness of the humpback in the dramatic ending to this book.

I eagerly turned page after page of this book. The page breaks come at moments of highest suspense and the language is rich but economical. This book would be a great mentor text for effective picture book page turns, for how to build suspense, and for how to use vivid words in descriptions.

This story is based on news articles of an actual event. The back matter gives more information about that original event, about the limits of whale rescue, and about humpbacks.

This is a great read with beautiful paintings by Wendell Minor. And it’s tragically timely, too. This news report appeared six months after the book was published, but it could have been the source of the book.

Trapped! A Whale’s Rescue, by Robert Burleigh, illustrated by Wendell Minor. Charlesbridge: 2015.

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24Mar

Rags Hero Dog of WWI A True Story

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rags hero

 

 

 

 

 

This is a surprisingly sad story about a dog whose master is killed in World War I. The story is told mostly from Rags’ point of view in a straightforward, unsentimental way. The dialogue is invented, but the story gives a dog’s-eye-view of the ways one dog helped the war effort a hundred years ago.

The illustrations were probably my favorite part of the book. Who wouldn’t fall in love with Rags?

Rags Hero Dog of WWI: A True Story by Margot Theis Raven, illustrated by Petra Brown. Sleeping Bear Press: 2014

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19Mar

Strongheart

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strongheart

 

 

 

 

 

This is a straight-up biography of the German Shepherd who became the first canine movie star, back in the days of silent moview. Along the way it suggests a bit about the biography of the couple who adopted him and trained him to act in the movies, but the focus remains on Strongheart. The voice is authoritative and documentary, and the book is lots of fun for animal-lovers.

The illustrations are lots of fun, and let us bask in the Roaring Twenties.

Strongheart: The World’s First Movie Star Dog, by Emily Arnold McCully. Henry Holt: 2014

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12Mar

On the Wing

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wing

 

 

 

 

 

I loved this collection of poems, each about a different species of bird. The language was vivid and evocative, the rhythms and rhymes surprising and satisfying. Plus, all the poems were short.

This would be a great read-aloud, both at home and school, and a great mentor text before going outside to do nature drawing and writing. Plus, the poems are really fun!  Just one to whet your appetite:

The Oriole and the Woodpecker

Music lovers fast await

the first duet

of summer.

Oriole is vocalist.

Woodpecker is drummer.

On the Wing by David Elliott, illustrated by  Becca Stadtlander. Candlewick: 2014.

 

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6Feb

Skydiver

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sky

I was fascinated by the structure of this story. The first half of the book seems to be a natural history of peregrine falcons. We see a pair return to their nest, watch the male display for the female, and see them hunt. We see the mother lay a clutch of eggs.

Then, suddenly, there is a human in the illustration. She’s rapelling down the side of the cliff, where the nest is, and she steals the eggs! We’re as mystified as the birds, but they get on with their lives and lay a second clutch of eggs. Tragically, all but one of the eggs breaks before chicks hatch.

And there, in the middle of the book, we move away from the natural history and learn about what made the falcon eggs so dangerously thin and brittle: the pesticide DDT. We watch a protest against DDT, and breathe in relief as it is banned.

In the concluding section of the book, we see what the scientists are doing to help the peregrine falcons recover. We get to see those chicks, hatched from the stolen eggs, and watch how the scientists work with them to preserve their species.

The illustrations of the peregrine falcons are beautiful, and it’s a fascinating and inspiring book that gets into the nuts and bolts of what it takes to help a species back from the brink of extinction.

Skydiver: Saving the Fastest Bird in the World, by Celia Godkin. Pajama Press: 2014.

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2Feb

Neighborhood Sharks

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sharkss

“Every September the great white sharks return to San Francisco. Their hunting grounds, the Farallon Islands, are just thirty miles from the city. While their 800,000 human neighbors dine on steak, salad, and sandwiches, the white sharks hunt for their favorite meal.”

This opening catapults us into the hunt. And what are those great white sharks hunting for? Katherine Roy builds up suspense with a series of brilliant page turns (in which I was wondering–is it people?) until we see that they are hunting seals.

After that engaging, page-turning opening, the book is organized to give us details, page by page, of the process of a shark actually consuming that yummy prey, the seal. We learn why the seal is an ideal food source for the shark, how the shark’s body helps him move as a hunter, how the shark’s jaws actually function during an attack, and much, much more.

There’s even a subplot to this book! Just when it feels like the book is coming to an end, Roy introduces the scientists who are trying to study the sharks, and we learn how they study them and what they’ve learned from those studies.

Roy’s watercolor illustrations are gorgeous (even if they are a bit gory). The book is absorbing and fascinating–a definite page turner!

Neighborhood Sharks: Hunting with the Great Whites of California’s Farallon Islands, by Katherine Roy. Roaring Brook Press: 2014.

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30Jan

On the Wing

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wing

This collection of short, accessible poems soars! Each spread features an illustration of a different species of bird and a poem about them. The longest poem is 19 lines, the shortest 3. There is rhythm and there is rhyme, but both are always subjugated to the brilliant images Elliott is painting with words.

The Cardinal

He’s a hotshot

valentine.

She’s a Plain Jane.

But one without…

the other…

a song with no refrain.

Since I picked up this book, I’ve been seeing something different when I look at the sparrows in the bush outside my window. It’s a great book to share with kids who love to watch birds, or to share to help them really see the birds they watch.

On the Wing, by David Elliott, illustrated by Becca Stadtlander. Candlewick: 2014.

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16Jan

Ivan The Remarkable True Story

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ivan

I was hesitant to read this picture book as I expected it to be a cynical rewriting of the Newbery Medal novel, The One and Only Ivan. So I was surprised that the only reference to the novel appeared on the cover, and that was almost incidental (“by Newbery medalist Katherine Applegate). Even the illustrator for this book is different from the illustrator for the novel.

This is an honest, straightforward biography of a gorilla who was displayed most of his life in a shopping center but ended his life in the Atlanta Zoo. The book starts poetically, “In leafy calm, in gentle arms, a gorilla’s life begins,” but the narrative voice in the rest of the book is much more matter-of-fact.

This book would pair well with the Newbery novel, but it’s fine by itself, as a look at how our attitudes toward animals in captivity have changed in recent times.

Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla by Katherine Applegate, illustrated by G. Brian Karas. Clarion: 2014.

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17Dec

Animal Teachers

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“Who taught you to do things? Your parents and others who care about you were your first teachers. Who teaches animals?”

Each spread of this book explores a different animal which has to learn a survival behavior after it is born. It’s a layered text–you can read just the large font text and have it make sense, but the small font text adds information and depth. And each spread ends with questions inviting the listener to apply the text to herself:

Are you a good singer? Who sings to you?

The paper in this book is luscious to touch–thick, slightly textured. Beautiful. Are Blue Apple Books always so satisfying to hold?

Animal Teachers by Janet Halfmann, illustrated by Katy Hudson. Blue Apple: 2014.

 

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5Dec

Move!

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This book is built around an insight so obvious you’ve probably never thought about it. I hadn’t! Despite what we teach toddlers, bunnies don’t only hop and birds don’t only fly. All living creatures move in different ways at different times. Page builds that insight into her clever structure: we see each featured animal move in two different ways, and the second way it moves is the first way the next featured animal moves. Such a simple and elegant structure, and so effective!

A spread at the end gives a little more detail about each animal. Steve Jenkins’ illustrations and the book design are gorgeous.

Move! by Robin Page, illustrated by Steve Jenkins. Houghton Mifflin: 2006.

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