Who Knew?

Did you know?
In New York, it is against the law to throw a ball at someone's head for fun.
The Venus Flytrap grows naturally only in North and South Carolina.
In Gary, a person may not enter a movie house or theater or ride a public streetcar within four hours of eating garlic.
In Alaska, it is against the law to wake a sleeping bear in order to photograph it.
Each August, Twinsburg, Ohio holds the Twin Days Festival, the world's largest annual gathering of twins.

I learned all of this AND SO MUCH MORE in the new book GO, GO America by Dan Yaccarino.
Beth at Cover to Cover shared this book with me yesterday. I thought it was going to be like all of those other books about states--general info. But when I opened it up and started reading, I was amazed at how much fun info was packed into every page. What fun information. Every single piece of trivia is as interesting as those I shared above. It is quite a fun book. One I'd love to read Cover to Cover. In terms of curriculum, there is lots of ways to use this book in the classroom. We are currently doing a unit on government-such a hard thing for kids to understand. But if we take some of these laws and learn about how they actually came to be, it might really help them understand how democracy works. This states in this book are set up in order of how the Farley Family travels the country. The Table of Contents is quite creative and the author dedication ties into the book too. At the end of the book, more traditional information about each state is shared (capital, state flower, motto, etc.)

This will be a definite hit in my classroom (if I ever decide to share it!).