Blue Whales

Billy Twitters and his Blue Whale Problem
by Mac Barnett
illustrated by Adam Rex
Hyperion Books, 2009
review copy from my classroom library

I love the sly way this book weaves facts about blue whales into the story of a boy who doesn't clean his room.

"Billy Twitters, clean up your room, or we're buying you a blue whale, " his mother threatens. Billy doesn't take her seriously because he knows "a thing or two about blue whales."

But one day, a whale shows up outside his door and it's his responsibility...

The reader learns plenty of facts about blue whales in the text and the illustrations absolutely communicate the scale of a blue whale in a classroom, on a playground, and next to a school bus.

Billy comes up with a clever solution to both the problem of owning a blue whale AND the problem of cleaning his bedroom!

(Mac Barnett will be at Cover to Cover Bookstore on March 7 from 10:30-12:00!)

The Blue Whale
by Jenni Desmond
Enchanted Lion Books, 2015
review copy provided by the publisher

This book works the same way. "Once upon a time, a child took a book from a shelf and started to read."

You guessed it. It was a book about blue whales.

The words we read are the words the boy is reading in his book about blue whales. But the pictures tell the story of what the boy imagines, how he conceptualizes sizes and distances and amounts, and sometimes what he does between page turns.

These will be two fun books to share with students to learn about blue whales and to invite conversations that compare and contrast the two books.