If the world were 100 animals
Written by Miranda Smith Illustrated by Aaron Cushley Red Shed 2022 I was really excited when I began reading this book and an immediate desire to teach maths overcame me. Maths? You might ask- but why? Well Miranda Smith and Aaron Cushley do something really clever in this non-fiction picture story book about animals. The whole book is a beautifully illustrated lesson in animal classification (so I’m keen to teach some science lessons too- and that’s from a self-proclaimed science novice!), however, the way that it helps young minds to imagine these classifications for over “20 billion billion animals all over the world” is through the introduction of percentages. Initially, the book demonstrates how, if we were to imagine only 100 animals in the world, we could understand that 6 of them would be vertebrates and the other 94 would be invertebrates. It then goes on to further classify the vertebrates into birds, amphibians and fish, again breaking these into percentages by asking the reader to image only 100 vertebrates. And the classifications become more intricate and detailed as the book continues. Illustrator, Aaron Cushley, has created stunning colourful images of the animals in their classifications. The engaging visuals, intriguing facts and ingenious structure make this book perfect for a vast age range starting from 6 to around 12 years, and a wonderful teaching resource for maths, science, reading and writing (and probably plenty more!).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
What's this about?As a lover of books and a teacher, I read widely. Here you will find book reviews of many genres including picture story, middle grade fiction, graphic novels, women's fiction, short story anthologies, non-fiction and anything else that takes my fancy. Archives
January 2022
Categories |