nonfiction Archives - Page 590 of 611

The Bug Book
by Sue Fliess (Author)

Bugs, bugs, everywhere! There are big bugs and small bugs, creeping bugs and flying bugs. Grab your bucket and explore the dirt and the sky.

#kidlit Writing Lesson: the small details

This rhyming story opens with an invitation to readers:

Grab your bucket. Check your guide.
Let’s go find some bugs outside.

Notice the use of the second person voice.

Grab your bucket.

Second person is the voice used to give directions.

Check your guide.

Each line has a different action verb.

Let’s go find some bugs outside.

Each line on this first page is a call to action.

See the book trailer.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

When Spring Comes
by Kevin Henkes (Author) and Laura Dronzek (Illustrator)

Booktalk: The BIG Picture

The award-winning, bestselling husband-and-wife team of Kevin Henkes and Laura Dronzek collaborate for the first time since their acclaimed picture book Birds (2009).

Before spring comes, the trees are dark sticks, the grass is brown, and the ground is covered in snow. But if you wait, leaves unfurl and flowers blossom, the grass turns green, and the mounds of snow shrink and shrink. Spring brings baby birds, sprouting seeds, rain and mud, and puddles. You can feel it and smell it and hear it—and you can read it!

#kidlit Writing Lesson: the small details

Some pages of this picture book for ages 2-4 have a simple before and after pattern. It’s a compare and contrast story arc.

On one left page it says:

Before Spring comes, the garden is just dirt, and empty.

The facing page on the right says:

But if you wait, Spring will push green shoots through the dirt to fill up the garden.

The “before” page states a fact. The “after” addresses the reader with the words:

But if you wait

. . . before stating a contrasting spring fact.

Everything is personal to preschoolers, even the seasons!

BONUS! Read an interview with Laura Dronzek

Snippet: “Laura Dronzek’s color-drenched illustrations for When Spring Comes (Greenwillow, 2-4 years) bring husband Kevin Henkes’s poetic text into full bloom.”