The Animal Book by Steve Jenkin

Jenkins, S. (2013). The animal book. New York, NY:Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing.

The Animal Book was written by Steve Jenkins and is an informational book on the topic of animals.  It was published in 2013 and was placed on the ALSC Notable Children’s Book list in 2014.  The Animal Book is an almanac of hundreds of animals that includes interesting facts and wonderful illustrations.

In the classroom, this book could be used by students to conduct research on a specific animal.  The book gives a plethora of information for each animal such as size, habitat, and diet.  Students could research an animal, create a poster or video, and then give a short presentation to the class. Alternatively, this would be a fantastic resource to use when teaching nonfiction text features. Students could complete a text feature scavenger hunt where they would need to use the book to find certain features such as heading, index, bold word, and glossary.

I really enjoyed this informational book! The illustrations are colorful and creative. They were created using cut and torn paper and are located in several places throughout the book. I also enjoyed the vast array of animals presented in this book. Kids of all ages would love looking at the illustrations and reading the hundreds of neat animal facts in this book.

(Image retrieved from amazon.com)