Nothing Like A Puffin

Nothing Like A Puffin
by Sue Soltis
illustrated by Bob Kolar
Candlewick Press, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

This is a very fun book!

It starts off being a book about the things a puffin is NOT like: a ladder and a house. But then we come to the newspaper, and

"A newspaper, to be sure, is nothing like a puffin. A newspaper is shaped like a rectangle and made out of paper. A newspaper has pages. It's black and white. But wait -- a puffin is black and white, too! What are the chances? 

A newspaper is something like a puffin, after all."

After the newspaper come things that a puffin is more and more like, until we get to a penguin, which is very much like a puffin...but not quite. In the end, "There's nothing like a puffin!"

The illustrations have their own story line, so the book begs to be read more than once to enjoy all the details. 

And this is a book that also begs to be used as a mentor text. Wouldn't it be fun to pick an animal or an item, find a few things that it is NOTHING like, then several things that it is SORT OF like, and finally one thing it is A LOT alike, and write with the same pattern? Yes, I thought so. We'll be doing this in our writing workshop after the first of the year!