ANIMALS IN FLIGHT by Steve Jenkins

This blog was created for a course at TWU.

Bibliography

Jenkins, Steve &Page, Robin, 2001. Animals in Flight. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Summary

This book describes how and why birds and insects fly. It has great pictures and great descriptions. It has one main tidbit of information on each page and one main picture. Under the main picture is more information on that specific picture. Then there are smaller pictures on the page with even more information. There is information on birds, insects, dinosaurs and bats. The last part of the book is about humans in flight. The author shows a little bit of the history of man in flight. He starts with early flying inventions and goes to the Blackbird spy plane which is the "fastest plane."


Analysis

The beginning of the book talks about imagining to fly. What kid has not done that? That is a great way to peak interest in the rest of the book. They layout of the book is great. The book has one main picture on each page with a small paragraph with information on that picture. It is a good attention grabber. There are smaller pictures with more information on each page. There is also one large sentence with information on flying. These "headlines" could be read by themselves as a story. The book can be read in small bits as well as all at once. The large pictures really help to draw you in and then want to look at the smaller pictures.


Review Excerpts

School Library Journal review- "With their creamy colors and sharp outlines, these tiny pictures are lovely as well as informative. The text is brief."

Connections
I would defiantly use this book on a unit of birds or insects. I would like to a KWL with my students over birds or insects that fly. I think bringing questions that they wonder about to the forefront will help them to focus more on the book.