Florian, Douglas. 1994. Beast feast. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Compnay. Mr. Florian provided the poems and the paintings. ISBN 9780152951788.
This book is full of delightful animals that children are mostly aware of. Mr. Florian has a particular talent for teaching us about these animals in a fun manner. Most of the poems are very short, only 2-3 lines, but in just a few words he is able to capture the essence of the creature. The artwork is engaging and colorful and fits very well with the poem.
In most of the poems, there is a rhythmic and rhyming pattern that is easy to hear and feel, making the poems very easy to read, and quite memorable. Children could easily walk away from this book chanting the rhyming information on an animal depicted here.
As an adult reading these poems for the first time, I was impressed on how much information about the animals is included and how accurate it is. (I was amazed that it fits into poetry form.) Many of the science details I already knew, but I loved how cleverly he was teaching it. Kids will hardly realize that they are learning "science" while reading this book.
I have many favorites from this book, but I picked:
THE FIREFLY
On August nights
The firefly lights
Blink
ON and OFF
Amongst the trees
But have no need
For batteries.
After reading a poem from this book to elementary children, a great sponge activity would be to focus on the animal mentioned in the poem and follow it up with real pictures of that animal, further showing some of the details mentioned in the poem. There are also many zoos and aquariums that have webcams in various animal cages and tanks, and children would enjoy following the daily activities of the animal mentioned in their poem, such as a whale, barracuda, anteater, boa, rhea, armadillo, sloth, camel, bat, kangaroo, kiwi, etc.
This is a great book that would complement any library.
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