Animals In Flight

  Steven Jenkins

  Illustrations: Robin Page

  Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001

  Informational Text, Animals

  All ages in Elementary School, in my opinion

This book is all about things that fly; birds, insects, a mammal.  This book has beautiful illustrations, they are made of paper collage.  The illustrations are so layered and colorful and detailed.  I think this book is so appropriate for many different age ranges.  There are the basic sentences at the top of the pages that are written in bigger print. There are also smaller font captions that go into more detail about interesting facts about things that fly, and these small excerpts build more knowledge about these different things.  The book talks about the fastest and the biggest and the smallest and all sorts of different creatures and facts about them.

I think this book could be such a useful tool in the classroom.  Children are always wondering about things!  So this book would be something that they would really enjoy.  Every time they read the book they can gain more and more knowledge.  I know that when I was reading the book and the small excerpts in there I learned somethings that I never knew and was completely astonished to find out.  The illustrations are captivating!  Even a child who is not able to read yet would be able to look at the different creatures in the book and see how beautiful they are.  

Like I said before this would be great when teaching about animals especially when talking about birds or things that.  After reading the book or after the children have been able to look through it one idea would be to have the children pick something that can fly and do some research on it and do some sort of research project.  They could pick a certain kind of something that fly's and make a mobile out of and you could put it up on the ceiling in the classroom, like they were flying!