Jan Kottke

With clear, simple language and up-close photographs, this book describes the frog life cycle. I used this book with my kindergarten class to discuss the differences between reptilian life cycles and the metamorphosis that amphibians go through. This book did the trick and they instantly got the concept.

Time to start getting into the Halloween spirit by reading some of the children's books from our home library.

This one is a simple look at how pumpkins seeds grow into pumpkins, with nice photos and bare-minimum prose. My daughter and I were not impressed when we first read it twenty years ago, and it's still pretty generic today.

I have a pumpkin on the front porch right now. The neighborhood squirrels are kind enough to carve it for me:

https://i.imgur.com/4BAQjEQ.jpg

FOR REFERENCE:

Rated show more “Indifferent" in our old book database by Rod and Adelia. show less

From Egg to Robin follows the progression of eggs hatching, baby robins growing up, becoming independent, and then becoming parents on their own. At the end of the book are some definitions of new words, resources to learn more about birds, and an index of where words are located in the book. These additional features make the book a good example of a reference book, yet while remaining age appropriate.

This book would be a good addition to a unit study on robins. It could be used to show more introduce the changes with spring. For older children, it could be used as an example for a project where the children make their own reference books.

We repeatedly read the book and matched the photographs to what we saw in the robin’s nest outside, which was a lot of fun. I look forward to getting the other nonfiction books in this series.

Recommended age: 5-6 years

Writing style: Large font sentences on a white background. Key phrases are repeated in the book, such as "keep them warm" and "baby birds". There is repetition in the word choice as well to help reinforce concepts, such as nest, feathers, eggs, and food.

Lexile score: 180L
Decoding difficulty: 3/5
Vocabulary difficulty: 4/5
Sentences difficulty: 2/5
Patterns difficulty: 3/5

Illustration style: Photographs of robins and their babies related to the text on the page.

Reality-based: Yes, this is a nonfiction book about the life of robins. show less

A Day with Firefighters is an informative book about what a firefighter does. The book is easy to read, and all the text is partnered with a picture that clearly shows what the words are detailing. The book features many words that students will know and some that will be new to them. This would be a good book to help kids connect meaning to words. For example kids know what a helmet looks like but may not be able to spell it. This book would be great for that. This book although ideally for show more young kids can almost certainly be used for all students regardless of gender or culture since all kids know what a firefighter is or have at least seen them. show less