Insects Who Eat Poop

Behold the Beautiful Dung Beetle by Cheryl Bardoe is a science picture book that will delight kids and gross out their parents. These beetles live on the poop of animals (but not their own.)

Sample: "For these beetles, dung is a precious pile of food and drink."

Readers will learn that there are three types of dung beetles, each with a special way of eating feces: dwellers, rollers and tunnelers.

This book  has a fascinating facts section, glossary, and selected bibliography.

Activity:
Locate dung beetles by looking under cow patties or deer droppings but as the author warns, wear gloves, so you don't get sick from the bacteria that live in dung and wash your hands afterwards.

Athletes to Know

Wilma Rudolph by Isabel Martin is an ideal biography for grades two and three. It has chapter titles: Meet Wilma, Growing Up, Adult Years and Later in Life. The back page gives suggestions for critical thinking using the Common Core.

Sample: “Wilma Rudolph was a famous Olympic track runner from Tennessee.She was very fast.”

Teachers will like the glossary, suggested titles for further reading and internet sites.

History Through the Eyes of Unknown People

Sometimes you can learn about  American history through stories of people you may have never heard  of.  One example is: Searching for Sarah Rector : the Richest Black Girl in America by Tonya Bolden.

Because Sarah and her family had a relationship with the Creek Nation, they qualified to receive land.  Sarah's land had oil wells.

Sample: "If that first oil well kept kicking.... eleven-year old Sarah Rector would be able to afford piles of playthings, clothes, and doodads, not to mention a bigger house for her family."

Activity

Do you know someone who  participated in a historical event?
Ask this person for an interview.
 Find out what he or she thought while the event was going on.
What details does the interviewee remember?

When a statue has a biography

STONE GIANT by Jane Sutcliffe is a picture book biography of a statue: David by Michelangelo. The city of Florence had a huge block of marble everyone hoped a sculpture could make into a statue of David but no sculptor would take on the challenge, until Michelangelo.  And it was a challenge.

Sample: “Every night he went home floured with the dust of not-David. He combed bits of not-David from his beard.”

Jane has thoughtfully provided a teacher resource for this book.

GOLDIE TAKES A STAND

Let’s say that you want to write a picture book about a historical event but you have only the briefest information available. What do you do?

You can follow the example of Barbara Krasner who wrote Goldie Takes a Stand: Golda Meir’s First Crusade. She wrote a book on an incident from Golda’s childhood. Poor children couldn’t afford books so Golda helped raise money for them.  Barbara’s only documented information was a newspaper clipping. She invented first person dialogue, which makes this book biographical fiction. But still a learning tool.

Sample: “Will the meeting come to order?” I announced to the girls crowded into our two-room Walnut Street apartment.”

What does this tell us about Golda? That she was a take-charge person.

That she lived in a crowded apartment.

ACTIVITY

Take any historical figure that interests you. Pick an event from that person’s life. Write a skit imagining the conversation that could have gone on during that event. Answer these questions: Who else was there? What did the event accomplish?

MISS MOORE THOUGHT OTHERWISE

MISS MOORE THOUGHT OTHERWISE

By Jan Pinborough

 Anne Carroll Moore ran the Central Children’s Room at the New York Public Library and was responsible for making the children’s room inviting for the child patron. This picture book biography will introduce the reader to the important contributions she made.

Sample: “She gathered collections of shells and butterflies to display. Then she filled the shelves with the very best children’s books she could find.”

Activities

1. Miss Moore had a wooden doll named Nicholas Knickerbocker she used during story hours.

Pretend that Nicholas could talk and was interviewing a child who had just immigrated to the U.S. and was at his or her first story hour.

What questions would Nicholas ask the child about his or her life?

What country the child came from? What customs from that  country did the child  especially like?

2. These are Nicholas’s treasures. http://www.missmoorethoughtotherwise.com/#!nicholass_treasures/cwvn.

Pick one and write a paragraph about one of them using the Who, What, Where, When of journalism.

A Really Cool Inventor

The Coolest Inventor: Willis Haviland Carrier and His Air Conditioner by Alison and Stephen Eldridge

Here's a snippet: "When Willis was in school, he had trouble understanding math with fractions. His mother had him cut up apples to work out problems with them. This taught Willis that he could solve problems if he just broke them down into simple pieces."


This book gives steps for young inventors to take  when they get a great idea.
It also includes a timeline, a glossary called words to know, books and websites, and an index.