2 Great New Nonfiction Picture Books About Endangered Animals

I just visited Bookies in Denver.  A great bookstore packed with books.  My friends here are taking such good care of me. It has been a great trip and today I did a bit of shopping.  I had never been to Bookies, so it was fun. (I also got some GREAT earrings at 5 Green Boxes. If you are ever in Denver, I would find this store. Very cool stuff.   

I picked up two new animal books for the library.  I have found that it is hard to find great nonfiction that younger readers can read on their own.  And, it seems like we never have enough books about animals. So I found two new nonfiction picture books that meet both needs. And both have great photographs that readers will love.

PANDA KINDERGARTEN by Joanne Ryder tells about a day in the life of the baby pandas at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda at Wolong Nature Preserve.  The photos of the panda cubs are adorable and the author gives us a peek into their day.  After the baby pandas are born and cared for they go off to "Panda Kindergarten" where they play with other panda cubs and discover new things. It is a great look into a place that is helping to protect the Giant Panda. The text is perfect--since so much of the story is told in photos, the text is perfect for younger readers.  6-10 lines of text are the average per page.  Lots of information about a great topic in a very kid-friendly book.

TIGER PUPS by Tom and Allie Harvey is the second book that I purchased.  At the Safari Zoological Park in Kansas, 3 Tiger cubs were born.  For some reason, the cubs' mother stopped taking care of the cubs so Tom and Allie Harvey's golden retriever, Isabella took over.  Tom and Allie and Isabella took care of the pups in their home until they were big enough to live outside. This book is a great story for all ages. Great photos accompany text that is perfect for primary students.  You can find lots of information about the pups as they grow on the zoo site.

These books are exactly the kinds of books I have been looking for for the school library--great animal stories that can be ready by young children and enjoyed by all ages.

Poetry Friday -- An Abecedarian Love Song to My Hometown

At the edge of nowhere,

Burlington,

Colorado is a place most

Drive through, not

Ever stopping

For more than

Gas and fast food by the

Highway.

If they took time to explore, they'd find the

Jewel of the town: the

Kit Carson County Carousel.

Listed as a National Historic Landmark, it's also listed in the

Memories of all who grew up here -- hot summer

Nights at the county fair, riding the carousel

On your favorite animal (hippocampus for me)

Perfection.

Quiet Main Street is 3 blocks away.

Remaining businesses do not thrive, but they

Survive. Farmers' pickup

Trucks cluster around Daylight Donuts at 6 a.m.

Under a

Vast sky and unbounded by

Wide horizons

Xpect to feel small here, even if

You are

Zipping by on I-70.

Miss Rumphius has a round up of abecedarian poems from her weekly poetry challenge.

This-n-That

A simple lesson in economics, and a big thank you Jessica Hagy for giving teachers credit where credit is due. Found at Indexed.

Way cool interactive timeline of children's literature.

Fabulous interview with Jan Thomas at 7-Imp.

New Mo Willems character unveiled!

The Sleepy LIttle Alphabet

Another pairing of two of my favorite people--How could I not like THE SLEEPLY LITTLE ALPHABET when I saw that it was written by Judy Sierra and illustrated by Melissa Sweet. This book reminded me a bit of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom when I read it.  All of the letters are trying to fall asleep but they really can't.  H is busy standing on her head and i and j are jumping on the bed.  So goes the story of the letters at bedtime.  The book goes through the alphabet and the letters are finally in bed. 

This is a great alphabet book to add to your collection if you teach primary grades.  The illustrations--as I have come to expect from Melissa Sweet--are amazing.  Different from some of her other work but really fun and wonderful in the details and uniqueness. The illustrations give the book a very fun feel. 

This book can be enjoyed by kids learning the letters and or letter sounds of the alphabet.  Letters on the end pages, on every page of the book and then in their beds at the end of the story will be fun for kids just starting to understand print.  This would also make a great read aloud--at home or at school.  And the story is a fun one, especially when you put the text and the illustrations together. These letter characters have quite the personalities!

Another Great Baby Gift

Beth at Cover to Cover handed me ALL OF BABY NOSE TO TOES by Victoria Adler and I had to buy it right away. This book is precious. It is a square little book with an adorable baby peeking at you on the cover.  The colors are soft, but not quite pastel.  This is a great book to read to a baby or small child.

The first page begins with the words, "Baby's got eyes, bright little eyes."  Then the next page the eyes are described as "round as pie eyes", "just the right size eyes" and more. The spread ends with, "Who loves baby's eyes?"  And of course, on the next page, it says, "Me! I do." The book follows this pattern continuing on with the baby's nose, ears, tummy and more.  So many people love the baby!

A great fun and happy book!  Definitely on my list of new favorite baby gifts.   I'm also thinking it would be a great text to use in Writing Workshop. The language and the way the baby is described would make for a great conversation about word choice and language.  Just love this book!

CYCLE OF RICE-CYCLE OF LIFE: A STORY OF SUSTAINABLE FARMING

I just read CYCLE OF RICE-CYCLE OF LIFE by Jan Reynolds.  This is a longer nonfiction book, meant for older elementary and middle school students.  The photos throughout the book are stunning and make this a very engaging book.

This book is not an easy one if you are not familiar with farming and production. But I so glad that I took the time to read it from cover to cover. I learned so much. On the island of Bali, a community has an amazing system for growing rice--one that involves everyone in different ways, one that understands the natural cycles of the earth, and one that connects to the spiritual lives of the people.  For a very long time, this system has been incredibly successful and has been able to sustain. The first part of the book explains this system, how it works, all of the components. The author helps us to see how much the farming of rice and the people of the community are connected.  Then we learn that because of the success of the system, the government decided to make it even more successful by interfering with the natural cycles and by spending lots of time and money to improve the system--interfering with many of the important things that made it successful. The last part of the book shares the work of J. Stephen Lansing, an American anthropologist who helped share information that helped Bali reinstate the original system.

This is an amazing story--one that helps us see more than the story of Bali and rice but also the importance of community, the ways in which we are clearly a global society and the ways in which new technologies do not always make things better. This is not an easy text but it is one that I am excited to share with kids.  There is a lot to learn and a lot to think about.  Whether it is a topic that is new to you or one that you are familiar with, this is a great read.

I have been thinking a lot about nonfiction books for middle grade readers.  As I have gone through the nonfiction section of our school library, it has become more obvious how nonfiction has changed in the last 20 years.  For so long, nonfiction for children was almost nonexistent.  The books were very encyclopedia-like and not really that much different from the actual encyclopedias.  But then we started to get some quality books, written specifically for kids.  One pattern I noticed later was that so many of the books that are in our library are on more of a "magazine" style--with photos, captions, etc. spread out all over the page. I realized that kids were spending lots of time with these books but were having trouble gathering information from them because of the volume and variety of information. So, I have been on the lookout for nonfiction books that can be read to cover to cover. 

I think if we think about our students and the types of content reading they will be doing in their lives, depending on their fields of study, sharing great nonfiction with them is hugely important.  I will be honest, this book was not an easy one for me to understand.  I read it through once to get the general idea of the concepts described.  I read it a second time to pick up more of the content details.  At first I couldn't imagine reading this book to elementary students but then I realized that so much of our nonfiction reading is about working through topics that are new and interesting to us. After having spent time with the book, I think it would be a perfect book to share with students--to think and wonder though together, to go back to adding more information than during the first read.  A great book and a great message for everyone.

Scaredy Squirrel Sighting (and a love letter to independent bookstores)

"Such a discouraging time for people who love reading. Independent bookstores are struggling, all those magical places built by people who loved books from the moment they could hold one, and wanted to share that love with others. Helen recalls one such store where she did a reading a couple of years ago, how inviting the place was, with its broken-in armchairs and lamps glowing a deep yellow, with the cat named Melville, who slept on his back in the front window. It was a browser's paradise, books so thoughtfully and attractively displayed you wanted everything you saw, whether it was a nonfiction book about cod, or a volume of poetry, or a fat novel with ragged-edged pages, or a cookbook featuring winter soups. It was a time -- the only time, as it happened -- that Helen had arrived far too early for her reading, and she spent forty minutes wandering around the store. In the children's section, she eavesdropped as a mother read Scaredy Squirrel to her son; both mother and child laughed aloud at the inclusion of sardines in Scaredy's emergency kit, and at his first step in what to do in case of emergency: "panic." Helen laughed, too, and stopped just short of asking if she could sit down and listen to the rest of the story." (p.227-228)

Poetry Friday -- Not a Poem

No poem this week. Instead, a quote from home safe by Elizabeth Berg:

"She opens the novel again, reads one page, another. Then another. And finally, everything in her own life surrenders to the one being presented here. An uneasy pain thins, lifts, disappears. Dan once had a friend who died from metastatic cancer. Toward the end, Dan visited him with some frequency; and each time he would call before going, to see what his friend might want or need. Each time, his friend requested the same thing: books." (p.39)

The round up this week is at Carol's Corner.

Surprise!

Mom and I went out to eat here...

Right next to here...

Where I noticed this...

And lookie who I saw!

That's J. Patrick Lewis and his daughter, continuing the promo of their new book that started at Cover To Cover in Columbus, Ohio!

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire

by Suzanne Collins

ARC shared by Karen Terlecky (I'll put it back in the mail to you today, Karen!)

Scholastic, September 1, 2009

I read more than half of this book on the plane on my way home. Got so deeply involved that I refused the free soda and peanuts between St. Louis and Denver.

I have forced myself to spread the second half of the book out over the last two days because I didn't want it to end. I didn't want to begin the limbo that will remain until the third book comes out. Now that I'm there, in that limbo, I'm feeling a little like Katniss. Manipulated (betrayed?). Numb. Incredulous.

It has been fun to read the kind of book I can get lost in, here in my childhood home where I spent so many hours lost in books right there at the end of the couch where I finished CHASING FIRE.

And Collins is masterful in the way she leads you into her story and then, with turns of plot and deepenings of characters, won't let you go until the story spits you out at the end.

But now we're left with a year to think about love and loss, family and friends, rebellion and revolution. And Mockingjays.