Wednesday, July 11, 2007

11. Owls by Gail Gibbons


Owls

story book with 32 pages

Nonfiction book annotation
By: Angela Wilcox


Gibbons, G. (2005). Owls. New York: Holiday House.

Author Creditability: Gail Gibbons is known for researching her topics first hand. She states that she loves doing research because she gets to ask questions like she did as a child and she gets to travel to different places and meet lots of people. She has been awarded for her contributions to children’s nonfiction with the Washington Post – Children’s Book Guild Award.

Summary: This book takes the reader through the life-cycle of owls. The reader will discover the different types of owls that live in North America. It will provide you with information and interesting facts on an owl’s: diet, ways of communicating, habitat, mating, and hatching from eggs. It then provides the reader with some facts on endangered owls and preservation steps to protect them.


Most Important Access Features: This book has several access features that help the reader read this book. There are inset text throughout the book, diagrams with labels, headings, a fact page at the end and pronunciations in parenthesis of how to say hard words.

Description of Illustrations: The illustrations in this book are paintings also done by Gibbons. She uses white glossy paper as the background, which helps the colors within the paintings easily visible to the reader. I found the illustrations with their labels helped the text to be understood. The end pages are done in blue which represented the sky to me.

Grade Level & Uses: Grades 1-3; I believe this book would be an excellent choice for a study on owls, birds, endangered animals, or preservation. This book could also be used a text to help students do research on an inquiry about owls.


Standards: Life Science; Science as inquiry.


Related Texts & How Related: These books could be used along with Owls to discuss owls and birds.

Barn Owl by Sally Tagholm
Owl Babies by Marin Waddell
About Birds: A Guide for Children by Cathryn Sill
How do Birds Find Their Way? By Roma Gans and Paul Mirocha

Gail Gibbons also has several books about different animals if you wanted to use this book within an animal unit.
Wolves,
Whales,
Polar Bears
Giant Pandas
Penguins
Sea Turtles
Sharks

Quality/Awards: It was placed on the Reviewer’s Choice List for 2005 Midwest Book Review Children’s Bookwatch on the Pets/Wildlife Shelf.

Personal Response to Book: I loved the illustrations in this book. I feel like Gibbons did an excellent job at illustrating and labeling them to help the reader become more informed about what she was writing about. I also like how she used key vocabulary within in text and labels to help children expand their vocabulary and understand what it is she is talking about pertaining to owls.

4 comments:

Debbie Vanderford said...

The cover of this book looks so inviting. My class and I always do a bird unit every year complete with owl pellets. This would be a good book to use with my unit.

Debbie

Christy said...

I would love to use this book with my egg laying animals literature unit I made in Dr. Brenner's class.

Tassie said...

Like Debbie, my students do a bird unit and dissect owl pellets. This would be a great book to use when teaching that unit. Another owl book I like is Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. It's a fiction book, but would pair nicely with this one.

Stephanie B. said...

I really do not know much about owls. This book seems to have so much information about them. This would also be a great book for my students to read during a unit I created on egg laying animals in Brenner`s class.