The newest edition of the Carnival of Children’s Literature is up at Susan Taylor Brown.
Happy reading!
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2009.
If you work with children, you might be interested in all the exciting activities surrounding the October release of the children’s book Winter’s Tail by Juliana Hatkoff, Isabella Hatkoff and Craig Hatkoff. Winter’s Tail is the heartrending story of a young dolphin named Winter who lost her tail after becoming entangled in a crab trap line. After she healed, she was fitted with a prosthetic tail.
There will be a webcast of a virtual field trip to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Clearwater Florida on Wednesday, October 7, from 1:00 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. Sponsored by Scholastic and Turtle Pond Interactive, you find teaching materials at http://www.scholastic.com/winterstail/. You can also see a short video introduction to Winter. Note: the video does show a mauled tail, so you might want to prepare young/sensitive children.
For an excerpt of the Winter’s Tail, see
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3750141
Winter’s Tail: How One Little Dolphin Learned To Swim Again
by Juliana Hatkoff, Isabella Hatkoff and Craig Hatkoff
Nonfiction Monday is a blogging celebration of nonfiction books for kids. For more information, stop by Picture Book of the Day. This week’s post is at Bookends Blog.
Praying Mantises: Hungry Insect Heroes (Insect World) by Sandra Markle
Finally, a book about praying mantises that doesn’t perpetuate the myth that female praying mantises always eat their mates. Sandra Markle writes in Praying Mantises: Hungry Insect Heroes, “Scientists report that mantises rarely do this in the wild.” It turns out that the myth was started when people kept praying mantises indoors to observe them. Female mantises require a lot of food to produce eggs and the people who fed them rarely supplied enough. The ravenous females ate anything presented to them at that point. When kept outside, the praying mantis often has enough to eat and her mate doesn’t become lunch.
Sandra Markle starts with a detailed look at the outside and the inside of a praying mantis. This is helpful for someone who has never looked closely at a praying mantis. Throughout the book are fabulous photographs and quick “mantis facts” that help capture a reader’s attention as he or she skims through. At the end, between “Digging Deeper” and the index, there are two activities. The first, strike time, relates to how extremely fast a praying mantis can grab its prey. The activity is easy to do and doesn’t require a mantis. The second is to observe a mantis up close in a jar for a day or two and then let it go. Just remember from above, it is hard to keep a praying mantis well fed.
We have had a praying mantis on the same plant for weeks now. Every morning we check to see that it is still there, and we’ve developed a fond feeling towards it. After reading this book we can now take our observations to another level.
Reading level: Ages 9-12
Library Binding: 48 pages
Publisher: Lerner Publications (December 15, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0822573008
ISBN-13: 978-0822573005
If you’d like to see a photograph of our mantis, check my Growing With Science blog praying mantis post.
Nonfiction Monday is a blogging celebration of nonfiction books for kids. For more information, stop by Picture Book of the Day. This week’s post is at Wild About Nature.
Tags: nonfiction for children, Nonfiction Monday Review, praying mantis book for children
Secret of the Puking Penguins . . . and More! by Ana María Rodríguez
Secret of the Puking Penguins and the other books in the Animal Secrets Revealed! series are actually well kept secrets themselves. Hidden behind the blaring, attention-grabbing titles are serious books for kids interested in real science. Ana María Rodríguez interviews five actual scientists about their research and describes new and interesting discoveries that they have made.
In the first chapter, scientists Anthony Herrel and Jay Meyers investigate how chameleons’ incredible tongues work. The tongues are not only sticky, as many of us already knew, but also are physically shaped to act like a suction cup. As the activity at the end of the chapter demonstrates, the suction cup action works much better at grabbing prey than stickiness alone.
The second chapter is about sensory apparatus in alligators. It isn’t until the third chapter does the reader find out about the “puking penguins.” As anyone who lived through the penguin craze of a few years back knows, penguins regurgitate food to their chicks. Rodríguez discusses how three French physiologists are so fascinated by the king penguins’ ability to hold food in their stomachs for long periods that they decided to study it further. By taking samples, the scientists revealed the penguins produce numerous antimicrobial substances (antibiotics) in their stomach to help preserve the food, including one completely new substance that no one had discovered before! How cool is that?
The final two chapters are about research of cuckoos, a bird that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, and about how peacock feathers create their iridescent colors. “Chapter Notes” at the end are numbered references from each chapter. This is a nice touch that parallels how literature would be cited in an actual scientific paper, getting budding scientists ready to produce the real thing.
Other than the author should have included a few more activities to reinforce learning (there is just one), this book is fascinating and informative for young readers interested in science. Now let’s get the secret out.
Reading level: Ages 9-12
Library Binding: 48 pages
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc. (September 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0766029557
ISBN-13: 978-0766029552
Here’s another book from the same series.
Nonfiction Monday is a blogging celebration of nonfiction books for kids. For more information, stop by Picture Book of the Day. This week’s post is at The Miss Rumphius Effect.
Tags: nonfiction for children, Nonfiction Monday Review, Puking Penguins Book Review, Secret of the Puking Penguins book review
