Nonfiction Monday: Big Babies, Little Babies

Big Babies, Little Babies
published April 2010 by DK Publishing
64 pages (hardcover), children's nonfiction

You and your kids will ooh and ahh and mostly aww your way through this book. I surely did! This collection of animal babies is all about the photographs. Each two-page spread features a different baby, including bears, dolphins, elephants, giraffes, penguins, monkeys, and much more. The photographs (a collection of stock images) drive the text in this book, with thought bubbles for the babies and captions that describe a small aspect of the baby's life.

The details in this book are what really sold me on it. And the organization. Each spread contains a large, bold, unique title with two or three sentences of description. The rest of the text is written in a smaller font size and serves as caption or thought bubble. Also, the spreads contain a dominant background color which is pulled from the images and also serves to outline the text and photo boxes. The page numbers wouldn't be complete without a paw print, webbed foot, or other stamp to match the  animal.

I have every intention of sharing this book with students in the library as a read-aloud. I probably won't read the whole book, or every single word on each page, but I will definitely hit some of the especially aww-worthy pages. This one might even work well using a document camera to project it on the board for enlarged images. Tie into teaching about how to read nonfiction text, what's a caption, text box, photograph, etc. Oh, the curricular connections are endless.

Check out more Nonfiction Monday posts at the round-up, hosted this week at Write About Now.

Pop! The Invention of Bubble Gum by Meghan McCarthy

Pop! The Invention of Bubble Gum by Meghan McCarthy
published May 2010 by Simon & Schuster
40 pages (hardcover), children's nonfiction picture book

How do I express adequately how much love I have for this book? But it's not the gleeful, jumping up and down kind - it's the quiet admiration of a job well done. So well done that I'm a little bit in awe.

The subtitle of this book gives it away - it is the story of how Walter Diemer persevered to create the perfect bubble gum. The topic will be an instant hit with kids, but what I love most about this book is how it tells a story by using actual quotations. No need to put this book in your picture book section, it's as real as they get. Every quotation is cited! And can we talk about the illustrations, please? The sweet, bubble-gum flavored, acrylic illustrations perfectly evoke the 1920s in color and style. And not only is it perfect for a read-aloud, but this is also a book the little ones could read on their own, with just a little help from an adult.

I am so happy when I find a nonfiction book that I enjoy because let's face it, nonfiction has a tendency to either be too dry or tries too hard to appeal to the kiddos. This book is neither - it's confident in its subject matter and tells the simple story of bubble gum's beginning. There is added material at the end for those wanting to know more about Walter Diemer and gum in general.

Check out the Nonfiction Monday Wrap-Up at Wrapped in Foil!

Nonfiction Monday: Sojourner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride

Sojourner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride written by Andrea Davis Pinkney and illustrated by Brian Pinkney
published November 2009 by Hyperion
32 pages (hardcover), picture book

I am not an avid fan of nonfiction, but I do happen to like narrative nonfiction. Tell me a story - and if it's true, I'll try not to hold it against you. So, I was delighted to find this little gem of a book in my library's new children's nonfiction section.

She was big. She was black. She was so beautiful.

This is the beginning of Sojourner Truth's story. What a hook! I am very much in love with what this husband-wife duo has produced here. Truth's story is told conversationally from her birth to her "Aint I a woman" speech" - and what ties it all together is her shoe size. Those size 12 feet stomped on the beetles on the farm in her childhood and would stomp on ignorance and injustice in her adult life. And that's the way a successful, interesting, kid-appealing nonfiction picture book is written - with flavor and style and a bit of pizzazz. Yes, I said pizzazz. Brian Pinkney's watercolor and ink illustrations are gorgeously soft and evocative - no complaints here in the picture department. But Andrea's text is what captured me - and that is a rare occurrence in a picture book that I particularly enjoy. I am generally drawn to illustrations and am often let down by boring writing. But there are no letdowns here! The text works so well with the illustrations - they are inseparable. In a scene where Truth is walking across many fields of greens and yellows with a large, swirling sun overhead, Pinkney writes:

Belle soon learned that to celebrate freedom, she had to speak her beliefs [...] Freedom meant she would 'travel up and down the land' to share her ideas. That's when Belle changed her name. She gave her slave name the boot, and called herself Sojourner Truth. She said the name Sojourner was just right for someone who was a traveler. And Truth--well, that was what Sojourner did best--she told it like it was.

Oh, I just love it! Go and read it for yourself!

As it is the beginning of February (hooray!), I am reminded that it is Black History Month. Because I know that local schools celebrate in various ways, I am happy to share this book today since it would be an excellent read-aloud for the elementary set. Though the inside flap reads "Ages 5-9," I probably wouldn't go younger than third grade, which still seems a bit young to me. Definitely for fourth and fifth grade. Background information about the times may be helpful before reading this book to students. Maybe a discussion about what freedom means to students too. Or looking up the word "sojourner" in the dictionary. There is certainly plenty that can be done with this book!

Nonfiction Monday is hosted at Wild About Nature this week. Check it out for the roundup of posts!