Snakes
Authors: Rachel and Jonathan Shelkh-Miller
Illustrator: John Woodcock
Publisher: Scholastic
Copyright Date: 2001
# of Pages: 64
Genre: Non-fiction
What really caught my eye about this book when I was
browsing down the aisles of Books-A-Million’s new children’s floor in
Birmingham, Alabama, was how large and bold green the snake was sitting on the
shelf. When I think of this book, I think back to a conversation I had when a
student in my practicum class. Boys love snakes. I’ve yet to come across a boy
that doesn’t, and when you ask them about nonfiction books they like to read,
it’s always about really fast vehicles or creepy crawly things. This book is
chocked full of the creepy-crawlies. It’s all about snakes, and from cover to
cover you get tons of information on these amazing creatures. The great thing
about this book that you could use in your classroom is the online database and
CD that comes with the book, so you get tons of resources for your classroom.
Most of the images you see in the book are photographs of
snakes at different angles doing the various things snakes do. There are a few
illustrations that appear to be done in color pencil. As a photographer’s
husband, I could imagine how fun it would be to take shots of these animals up
close and personal. I’m sure kids would really enjoy it too!
You could introduce at any school age, but I think you’d
get the most bang out of your buck with a 3rd for 4th
grade class and up. You could do a lesson on habitats or reptiles. You could do
a compare and contrast chart to another book of a certain type of mammal like
pandas or something. Between the subject material and the online and offline
digital material, the options for the classroom are broad. If I had to be
honest with myself, I think I liked this book because, at the core of it, I’m a
big kid who loves to read about odd and gross things.
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