Now I feel like I’ve copped out a
bit when coming up with my list. Who is one of my favorite nonfiction writers
for kids right now? Steve Jenkins. I could make a whole list dedicated to his
books. But I won’t. I’ll also include a few other ones that I know my students
love and go back to time after time.
Last year this book was a hit
with my fourth grade students. They loved everything about it—the informational
facts, the graphs, the illustrations. You could pick up this book, turn to any
page, and learn something fascinating. Check out this lego stop motion movie a
couple of my students made based on this book: https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=henry
Apex Predators: The World’s Deadliest Hunters, Past and Present by Steve
Jenkins (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)
Want to know about the alpha
animals millions of years ago and today? This book includes a treasure
trove of predators that never become prey. Kids will love seeing the size, the
bite, the fight of these beasts. The book even concludes with a timely
message about the deadliest predator of all. Can you guess what it is?
Big Book of Animals: A Lego Adventure in the Real World (Scholastic,
2017)
I have so many students who love
Legos and love animals. Organized by habitat, this book includes authentic
photographs alongside Lego characters spouting out facts about the animals. On
the bottom of many pages, there is a “Play it!” banner that asks a question
about Lego figurines related to the habitat or the animals.
The Deadliest Creature in the World by Brenda Z. Guiberson and
Gennady Spirin (Holt, 2016)
This is another book that kids
devour because it’s written from the point of view of the animal. Each left-hand
page introduces an animal: “I am a bull shark.” On the right-hand page, the
animal shares the reasons it thinks it is the deadliest creature in the world. Each
critter seems more deadlier than the last. Which is the deadliest of all? At
the end, the text simply says, “You decide!” My students also liked Guiberson
and Spirin’s The Most Amazing Creature in
the Sea, written in the same format.
Unusual Creatures: A Mostly Accurate Account of Some of Earth’s Strangest Animals by Michael Hearst (Chronicle, 2012)
I’ve had this book in my library
for five years now, and it’s still very popular. On each double-page
spread, the reader learns cool facts about the featured animal as well as its
biological classification, scientific name, habitat, and more. A sketch of
the animal to scale is also included. Kids will recognize some of the animals
(i.e, Komodo dragon) in the book, but most will be unfamiliar (i.e, hagfish).
Wow. After reacquainting
myself with all these deadly, unusual, apex, extreme animals, I think I’m ready
for a cute dog cuddle right now. I’m exhausted thinking about all these
amazing creatures, but for my elementary students, it’s just what they
love—reading to get their heart pounding just a little bit and gaining a new
fact or two to show off at the lunch table.
Stacey Rattner is the
"leaping librarian" at Castleton Elementary School, just outside of
Albany, NY. For the past three years she has run a Sibert Smackdown with a
collaborating fourth grade teacher and looks forward to doing it again in
2018-2019. You can follow her on Twitter @staceybethr or http://librarianleaps.blogspot.com/.
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