Almost Gone: The World's Rarest Animals

I really like this book because it goes into detail about all the different animals that are going extinct, how it happened, and how many are left. The illustrations are beautiful and are collage painted paper. I really like how the book talks about what one can do to get involved and educated about endangered animals. It also gives examples on how certain animals that were almost gone, are now coming back from people trying to protect them.

Jenkins is giving his reader information about the world’s rarest animals that are almost extinct. On each page, it gives the name of the animal, what country the animal is from, how many of the animal still exist and a brief description of the animal and why it is endangered. Every year there is at least one classroom in every school that does a report on animals. It would be an interesting twist to do reports on endangered species instead. I know that there are many endangered species in the world, but I have never actually studied them before. I was able to sit down and read this book from beginning to end in about 15-20 minutes. It was a great way to get a brief overview of the 28 animals that were listed and described.

I learned a great deal from reading this book. This book details some of the most interesting creatures that are endangered in the world today. Each page is devoted to a specific animal (at the top it mentions where it lives and how many are left). I really liked how the book is very specific about how many are left--doing this makes the prospect of their imminent extinction all the more powerful and scary. It's adds a necessary weightiness to the topic that is important for this subject to be meaningful. Each description provides some of the reasons why the animal is close to extinction. The illustrations are unique and I like how the reader is not bombarded with too many facts or details about the animal mentioned.

Like David McLimans "Gone Wild", "Almost Gone" is at the same time eye opening and sad. I think it is very important to discuss with students the fact that human actions can directly impact the natural world - sometimes in a detrimental way. I make a special point to discuss the Steller's Sea Cow that used to swim in the northern Pacific Ocean and became extinct in 1768 due to fur trappers hunting, because this very much relates to Washington state social studies curriculum and the settling of the area we live in.

The art for this book reminded me of Eric Carle ("Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What did You See?"). It goes through a short description of 28 animals, it tells you the number thought to still exist, if any, while telling you where they are located as well. I thought it was very interesting and I liked at the end how they mentioned a few animals that were brought back from the brink. Would have been nice if they said why they choose these animals out of the thousands of others that have gone extinct or close to it.

Endangered species from around the world, with beautiful imagery in Jenkins' cut paper signature style illustration. Tells amount left living, and why they have been eradicated (usually human development or hunting). The importance of losing these animals in the scheme of the entire food chain and ecosystem. "Every living thing is connected to many other living things, often in ways we don't understand or even suspect. And once an animal is gone it can never come back."

Summary: As the title suggests, this book is about a variety of Endangered Animals. Response: I am always fascinated by animals which made this book fun to look at and read. Connection: A fun book for science and working on the word, Endangered. Students love learning about rare animals.