Animals – Page 21 – Unleashing Readers

Paper Animals by Kane Miller Books

February 2, 2017 by Ricki

Paper Animals
Published: December 5, 2016 by Kane Miller Books

Goodreads Summary: In this book there are 14 different animals, with step-by-step instructions and different levels of difficulty, which will help you become an origami expert. Once you have all the animals ready, fold the giant boat at the end of the book and take all the passengers on board! Included are thirty pages of patterned paper, with printed fold lines. Develops hand eye co-ordination. Learn a form of communication without language. Focuses patience and increases self-esteem. Well-suited to a classroom of 30 or more students. Creates and manipulates basic geometric shapes such as squares, rectangles, and triangles. Reflects the ingenuity and aesthetics of Japanese culture; children gain appreciation of a different culture, opening a doorway to exploration and increased tolerance. Learn the ancient art of origami! In this book there are 14 different animals, with step-by-step instructions and different levels of difficulty.

My Review: I have always enjoyed origami, so this book made me feel a bit nostalgic. The first half of the book features pictures of the finished products and directions. The second half of the book includes origami paper that is tailored to each of the animals in the front of the book. So, for example, there is a lion instruction page in the first half of the book, and there is a page of lion origami paper at the end of the book that includes dotted lines for folds and a lion face! My three-year-old is absolutely obsessed with this book. We do one paper animal per day, and we put the animal inside of the giant book (included in the back of the book). He is too young to do the folding himself, but he cheers me on as I fold the paper. I would recommend this book to upper elementary schoolers through adults. Even as an adult, I found some of the paper animals to be very tricky.

Teachers’ Tools for Navigation: In high school, we were required to give a speech that included very specific instructions for participants. I made an origami crane and my peers followed my instructions at their seats. It would be fun to use this as a model for the speech activity. As an alternative, students might create their own origami animal with instructions! This would be hard to do, but it would be great fun!

Discussion Questions: What aspects are important when we give instructions? How did the authors of this book make the instructions easier to follow?; Which animals proved more difficult to make, and why?

Flagged Spread:

Read This If You Loved: Activity Books; Origami

Recommended For:

The Book of Heroines: Tales of History’s Gutsiest Gals & The Book of Heroes: Tales of History’s Most Daring Dudes from National Geographic Kids

February 12, 2017February 1, 2017 by Kellee

Nonfiction Wednesday

Nonfiction Picture Book Wednesday is hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy and was started to help promote the reading of nonfiction texts. Most Wednesdays, we will be participating and will review a nonfiction text (though it may not always be a picture book).
Be sure to visit Kid Lit Frenzy and see what other nonfiction books are shared this week!

The Book of Heroines: Tales of History’s Gutsiest Gals
Author: Stephanie Warren Drimmer
Published November 8th, 2016 by National Geographic Children’s Books

The Book of Heroes: Tales of History’s Most Daring Guys
Author: Cristpin Boyer
Published November 8th, 2016 by National Geographic Children’s Books

The Book of Heroines Summary: Everybody needs a role model! Discover true stories of superstars, war heroes, world leaders, gusty gals, and everyday girls who changed the world.

From Sacagawea to Mother Teresa, Annie Oakley to Malala Yousafzai, these famous females hiked up their pants and petticoats or charged full-speed ahead to prove that girls are just as tough as boys…maybe even tougher. Complete with amazing images and a fun design, this is the book that every kid with a goal, hope, or dream will want to own.

The Book of Heroes Summary: Everybody needs a role model! Discover the true stories of superheroes, rebels, world leaders, action heroes, sports legends, and many more daring dudes, all of whom played their part to make their mark, make a contribution, and make the world a better place.

From Abraham Lincoln to Sitting Bull, Stephen Hawking to Galileo, these cool guys had the boldness, bravery, and brains to meet the challenges of their day. With a fun design, engaging text, and high-quality photographs, this is ultimate hero guide and keepsake for 21st century kids .

Review: As I’ve stated over and over, I am so impressed with all the new National Geographic Kids books that I have encountered over the last couple of years. With this text, I specifically found the way that the publisher/authors structure the texts makes them so thematic-based thus accessible and informative. The books also have something for everyone as so many different types of heroines/heroes are featured from scientists, historical heroes, political heroes, and more! I cannot wait to put these in my classroom and find out how to use them with students!

Teachers’ Tools for Navigation: Teachers will find this book irreplaceable! It has so much information to fit into so many different units, connect with so many different texts, and relates to so many parts of history. These texts could also be used as the basis of a inquiry project where students use these texts as previews and they choose a theme or a hero/heroine and complete a research/inquiry project around it or maybe even create a text set around the theme or the person.

Discussion Questions: Which heroine/hero do you think changed history the most?; If you were to take part in an inquiry project about one hero/heroine, who would you like to learn more about?; Why did the author/publisher choose to structure the text in the way they did? What other structures could they have chosen? Which do you feel would have had a bigger impact?

Flagged Passages:

Read This If You Love: Biographies, History, Women’s Rights, Science, Animals, Mythology

Recommended For:

**Thank you to Karen at Media Masters Publicity for providing copies for review!**

Natumi Takes the Lead: The True Story of an Orphan Elephant Who Finds a Family by Gerry Ellis with Amy Novesky

December 28, 2016 by Kellee

Nonfiction Wednesday

Natumi Takes the Lead: The True Story of an Orphan Elephant Who Finds Family
Author: Gerry Ellis with Amy Novesky
Published November 8th, 2016 by National Geographic Children’s Books

Goodreads Summary: After losing her mother, shy Natumi is rescued by a team from the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an orphanage for baby elephants. At the shelter, Natumi hides behind keepers’ legs to watch the other elephants at the shelter. But soon, she meets several other orphans, and the eight of them play together in the surrounding bush.

As the babies become closer and more like a real family, they need a leader, someone they can trust. Can Natumi grow into this role?

Join the herd to find out what happens when they travel back into the wild. This sweet story, with its heartwarming photographs, explores the challenges and joys of family, love, and growing up, and is a perfect bedtime tale.

Review: In addition to being a story that teaches about elephants, Natumi’s story is one that will warm readers’ hearts. Her story is sad yet inspiring, heart breaking yet beautiful, and the reader gets to be there every step of the way. Gery Ellis’s photographs allow the reader to be right in the story and helps move this book past just a normal informational nonfiction text to literary nonfiction thus allowing it to cross boundaries in the classroom.

Teachers’ Tools for Navigation: Since the text crosses the informational/literary boundaries, there are immense possibilities to how this text could be used in the classroom. When I finished, the two things that struck me right away were the theme of the story and the inquiry that this story could be a basis for. Natumi’s story definitely has a pretty solid theme that can tie into many other texts or even science discussions about animal behaviors. Also, the text talks about one animal in peril in the wild, and it could be a jumping off point for a science/language arts crossover project where students state find a problem in the wild and create information, much like the author’s note, that shows ways to help and learn more about the issue. In addition, there are opportunities for vocabulary development, mapping skills, prediction, cause/effect, and much more.

Discussion Questions: How did poachers change Natumi’s life forever? Why are there poachers in Africa?; Why are elephant orphanages needed? How could we help this problem?; How did Natumi become the leader of her family?

Flagged Passages:

Read This If You Love: Elephants, Learning about endangered animals, Africa

Recommended For:

**Thank you to Karen at Media Masters for providing a copy for review!**

Noodles’ and Albie’s Birthday Surprise by Eric Bennett

December 16, 2016 by Kellee

Noodles’ and Albie’s Birthday Surprise
Author: Eric Bennett
Illustrator: Milanka Reardon
Published December 9th, 2016

Summary: Noodles’ & Albie’s Birthday Surprise is the continuing adventures of Noodles (a penguin) and Albie (his fish friend). The story takes place on the day of Noodles birthday, which happens to be December 24th. While waiting for his party to start, Noodles and his friends play on the ice while a group of red jacket wearing tourists from a nearby cruise ship take the penguins pictures. Meanwhile, his friend Albie is under the sea searching for the perfect birthday gift for Noodles. She eventually comes across an old compass from a sunken treasure chest, which is perfect for Noodles as in the first Noodles & Albie story (2014), he had some major sense of direction issues. After giving Noodles his compass, the two friends head off for a day at Polar Kingdom, the world’s greatest undersea amusement park. After a fun day, the pair begin their journey home, but soon notice a red glow up ahead on the oceans surface. The glow it turns out is coming from the nose of one of the strange animals they come across stranded on an ice floe, along with a mysterious red jacket wearing “tourist” with a white beard, and a sled full of boxes. It turns out the mysterious tourist is lost because his assistants insisted he try a GPS devise to help guide him. Now the chubby, old man is hopelessly lost. Not only is he lost, but he’s on a deadline, and he’s in Antarctica. He can’t find his way back on track because it’s always daylight in Antarctica in December, and the poor tourist can’t even see the North Star to navigate. He needs to get North and fast. Will Noodles help the lost tourist by giving him his compass?

Review: Noodles’ and Albie’s Birthday Surprise takes readers on a second adventure of two best friends that is just as wonderful as the first and with a delightful cameo the reader doesn’t see coming. Teachers and students will find much to discuss as they read this humorous, clever tale. After reading the first of Noodles’ and Albie’s stories, we were happy to hear that Eric had written a second to allow us to go on even more adventures with these great friends.

Teachers’ Tools for Navigation: While reading aloud Noodles’ and Albie’s Birthday Surprise, there are many opportunities for think alouds and discussions such as predicting what Noodles will do, discussing the end of the book as well as the characters’ traits, and discussing birthday and holiday celebrations.

Discussion Questions: What character traits does Noodles and Albie show throughout the story? Include evidence for each trait.; What is the best birthday you have ever had?; How did the lost traveler know where Noodles lived?

Flagged Passages:

Read This If You Loved: Noodles and Albie by Eric Bennett, Penguin series by Salina Yoon, If You Were a Penguin by Florence Minor, Your Personal Penguin by Sandra Boynton, Penguins by Seymour Simon, Tacky series by Helen Lester, A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis, Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg

Recommended For:

and

**Thank you to the author for providing copies for review!**

The Honest Truth by Dan Gemeinhart

November 10, 2016 by Ricki

The Honest Truth
Author: Dan Gemeinhart
Published: January 27, 2015 by Scholastic Press

Summary: In all the ways that matter, Mark is a normal kid. He’s got a dog named Beau and a best friend, Jessie. He likes to take photos and write haiku poems in his notebook. He dreams of climbing a mountain one day.

But in one important way, Mark is not like other kids at all. Mark is sick. The kind of sick that means hospitals. And treatments. The kind of sick some people never get better from.

So Mark runs away. He leaves home with his camera, his notebook, his dog, and a plan to reach the top of Mount Rainier–even if it’s the last thing he ever does.

The Honest Truth is a rare and extraordinary novel about big questions, small moments, and the incredible journey of the human spirit.

Ricki’s Review: In the introduction of the ARC, Dan Gemeinhart writes that this story was inspired by his friend Mark, who passed away from cancer. While the book is not about Mark, there are “smooth rocks of truth” within it. He wrote the story in hopes that Mark would enjoy reading it. With this in mind, I began the book already emotionally invested. Mark is a 12-year-old boy who has recently relapsed with cancer. He is tired of being sick, and he has set out with his dog and plans to go to Mt. Rainier to die. Much of the book is Mark’s journey to Rainier, and we slowly learn about his experiences with cancer throughout the story. Every other chapter is written by his best friend Jesse, and I found their friendship to be inspiring, particularly given the author’s introduction. This is a beautiful story that will leave a mark on readers’ hearts. I will be recommending it often.

Kellee’s Review: The Honest Truth was my first choice for my school’s faculty book club because I had only hear amazing things about it. I jumped into reading it without knowing anything about it, but by the end of the first page, I knew that all my friends who recommended it to me were right. Mark has a voice that is so full of hurt and sorrow that it jumps off the page and into your heart. The obstacles he faces and overcomes while also making his way to die alone show the strength of his character. I also was a big fan of the two points of view because it allows the reader to see what was going on at home and maybe get some more truth than what Mark was telling us (though he swears it all is the honest truth).

For our book club meeting, I tabbed up my book with passages I loved (I’ll list all the pages below), haikus that Mark wrote, and descriptions of all of the photographs he took along the way.

Teachers’ Tools for Navigation: This would make a fantastic read-aloud. It has so much to discuss! The richly realized themes would make for fantastic conversations in the classroom. I would love to hear students’ thoughts about the story, particularly in relation to the discussion questions below. There are many debatable points in the story—which makes it all the more interesting to use as a read aloud!

Additionally, The Honest Truth would be a good introduction to haiku and visual story telling since Mark writes haiku and takes photographs to help tell his story. The haiku (in chronological order) are found on pages 120, 8, 22, 78, 79, 130. The photos Mark took are explained on pages 226-227. Using these as mentor texts, students can create their own story using poetry and photography.

More discussion ideas can be found at http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plan/honest-truth-discussion-guide.

Discussion Questions: Was Mark selfish to leave home? Do you think he should have told his parents? Do you think what he did was fair? Were his actions fair to his dog?; If you were Jesse, would you have told authorities? Was she wrong to keep a secret? Do you think Mark had the ability to make such a big decision?; How did Gemeinhart use personification to help make the setting a character (see pages 34, 124, and 196)?; How much pressure do sick children have to act like adults?; How was Mark’s journey selfish? How was is selfless?; Who called? Wesley or Jess?; Why didn’t the mom ever look at her credit card report to see the train ticket?; Were you angry at Mark? Scared? How do you think students will feel?; Is a 12-year-old old enough to decide you want to die? Is it reasonable for adults to expect a kid to keep on going through treatment after treatment?

Flagged Passage: “Dogs die. But dogs live, too. Right up until they die, they live. They live brave, beautiful lives. They protect their families. And love us. And make our lives a little brighter. And they don’t waste time being afraid of tomorrow.”

Kellee’s favorite passages can be found on page 5 (“Here’s…”), 19 (“I bit…”), 21 (“I closed…”), 46 (“I was…”), 70 (“She knew…), 82 (“I like…), 97 (“Here’s…”), 179 (“They would…”), 212 (“And then…”), 228 (“There’s more…)

Read This Book If You Loved: “To Build a Fire” by Jack London; Hatchet by Gary Paulsen; The Call of the Wild by Jack London; Wonder by R.J. Palacio, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Recommended For:

and

Strange, Unusual, Gross, and Cool Animals by Charles Ghigna

November 9, 2016 by Kellee

Nonfiction Wednesday

Strange, Unusual, Gross, and Cool Animals
Author: Charles Ghigna
Published October 11th, 2016 by Animal Planet

Summary: Animal Planet presents the ickiest, stickiest, blobbiest, and oddest animals in the world!

Did you know that an archerfish can spit water up to 16 feet? Or that the giant weta is the world’s largest and heaviest insect? Animal Planet’s fascinating exploration of animal oddities introduces young animal lovers to some of the most astonishing, gorgeous, and obscure animals in the world-including some brand new discoveries! Packed with more than 200 vibrant photographs and fun facts about animals with unusual behaviors, strange appearances, and remarkable stats, this deluxe gift book is perfect for reluctant readers or anyone who loves totally gross and amazing animals.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of books in the Animal Bites series benefits the principal partners of R.O.A.R. (Reach Out. Act. Respond.), Animal Planet’s initiative dedicated to improving the lives of animals in our communities and in the wild.

Review: I love learning about weird animals because it is so amazing to see what mother nature has made out there! This book shares with the reader some of the weirdest! Trent and I love to sit and look through the pages and look at the cool animals!

What I really like about Animal Planet texts is that they have a variety of spreads throughout the text and include really interesting information but also beautiful photographs. This text has four types of spreads: Gallery, a spread that explores a theme; Featured Creature, a spread that focuses on one animal; Creature Collection, a spread that compares and contrasts a group of animals; and Macroview, a spread that shows tiny details of small animals.

Teachers’ Tools for Navigation: In addition to being an amazing text to have in classroom and school libraries, this text is a wonderful way to begin inquiry projects. When I teach my central idea unit, for my final assessment I ask my students to write their own nonfiction text with a clear central idea and supporting details. Many students choose animals for their nonfiction text, but it is usually the same offenders: dolphins, cheetahs, and dogs, so it would be really nice to have this text to jump start the brainstorming process.

Discussion Questions: What type of features do some animals have the help them protect themselves from predators?; Which animal did you think was the oddest looking?; Which animal do you think is not that odd looking?; Which animal would you like to learn more about?

Flagged Passages:

Read This If You Loved: Pink is for Blobfish by Jess Keating and other nonfiction picture books about animals, Animal Planet & National Geographic nonfiction such as Real or Fake?, Ocean Animals, Awesome 8, Animal Atlas, or the Animal Bites series

Recommended For:

**Thank you Charles Ghigna and Animal Planet for providing a copy for review!**

Musnet: The Mouse of Monet by Kickliy

December 10, 2017November 4, 2016 by Kellee

Musnet: The Mouse of Money
Author and Illustrator: K. Kickliy
Published August 2nd, 2016 by ODOD Books

Summary: Musnet: The Mouse of Monet is a delightful new children’s graphic novel by Kickliy, set in Giverny, France in the mid 19th Century. The eponymous boy mouse travels the countryside searching for work and happens upon Monet’s garden. There, he takes a job with a brilliant squirrel artist, and in the process is inspired to paint as well. Will Musnet commit to painting in the classical manner, or in the thrilling new style of the human impressionists? Which way will his brush sway?

Set in the midst of one of the great moments in the history of art, Musnet is a bildungsroman of an aspiring young artist, a mouse with his eye on the new impressionistic style that was taking the world by storm. Kickliy’s fluid ink and watercolors evoke the magic of the period and a French countryside just bursting with color. And Musnet and Monet’s paintings within this story are actually mini-oil paintings of Kickliy’s.

The first in a series, Musnet: the Mouse of Monet is the mysterious artist Kickliy’s first foray into the world of children’s literature, and will include a traveling gallery showing of the art within the book itself. Uncivilized Books is proud to launch its new children’s imprint, Odod Books, with this brilliant examination of impressionism and the artistic urge that will enrapture children of all ages.

Review: I love when books include art history in them because it makes me feel at home since I grew up in art museums as a museum director’s daughter. Musnet is no different. As soon as I realized that Musnet had ended up in Monet’s famous garden, I was fascinated with Musnet’s story and his journey to becoming an artist. Kickliy’s artwork pays perfect homage to Monet’s work and is a beautiful backdrop to Musnet’s story. I look forward to reading the second in the series.

Teachers’ Tools for Navigation: Musnet’s story would be a perfect book to incorporate in a art classroom. Throughout art education, different famous artists are studied, and while studying Monet, I could definitely see the teacher using this text as a read aloud and a discussion starter (see discussion questions below).

Discussion Questions: Why would the author choose Monet as the artist for Musnet to find?; How is Kickliy’s art similar to Monet’s?; Do you think Musnet has found his forever home? Explain.

Flagged Passages:

Read This If You Loved: Mira’s Diary by Marissa Moss, The Museum by Susan Verde, Babymouse series by Jennifer and Matthew Holm, The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo, Redwall by Brian Jacques

Recommended For:

**Thank you Uncivilized Books for providing a copy for review!**