Super cute illustrations and a very fun plot of following the adventures of circus monkeys. I would definitely recommend for kids who love animals. ( )

This is a great series of book by math start. Spunky Moneys on parade helps students learn how to count by more than just 1, it introduces counting by 2, 3 and 4. This is good practice for students learning to count by multiples. I used this in my classroom at the beginning of the school year while we were learning the basics of counting. My students loved it because they were able to count all of the monkeys doing different things in the parade. ( )

Spunky Monkey on Parade by Stewart J. Murphy is about a monkey parade. Each new page shows you a new event. There is a baton twirler, cyclists, tumblers, and a monkey band. At the end of the parade, the king and queen come by on a float and throw bananas to the crowd.

The pictures in this book are vibrant and colorful. The artists took a lot of care with the details and even when there were several monkeys on the page, they looked unique. The funniest one was a monkey with one tooth that jutted out over her lip. The artists also included traffic signs and big buildings in the background. There were no humans in this book, but the monkeys acted like humans and wore clothes and even glasses.

The story was simple and good for a second grader to try and read, though they may need help with a few of the words. This book was written to help kids with math, but I did not realize it until half way through. There are pages with monkeys grouped and doing flips or playing instruments. On these pages the illustrator demonstrate skip counting, which can be very useful to kids and gets them ready for multiplication.

The math portion could be skipped during a reading without anything being missed and it did not seem forced. It was more of a here-if-you-want-it kind of thing. In the back of the book, there is a note to the parents explaining the process of skip counting. It also included tips for how to teach it and what to do with your child as you read the story to them.

Along with the guild on skip counting, there are a few activity ideas. This is a great book to read before a major holiday that has a parade. It will get the children excited. It is very useful because of the math principles engrained, but it can be useful in other ways as well. It would be a good way to introduce students to music. They can see what the instruments look like and then the music teacher can talk about how they sound or pull up recordings.
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This is a good example of poetry. It has rhythm and rhyme. It also has carefully chosen words.
Stars: Theme
Age: Primary/Intermediate ( )

Genre is fantasy with monkeys that are in a parade doing things like bicycling and tumbling.

Setting- Backdrop; not too important whether they change the background or not ( )