Thursday, November 3, 2011

Chapter Book #8 Write-Up

Author: Jackie Glassman
Title: Amazing Arctic Animals
Illustrator: Lisa Bonforte
Genre: Non-Fiction
Subgenre: Informational
Theme: Learning about the animals that live in the Arctic.
Primary/Secondary Characters: Terns, the Caribou, Whales, the Polar Bear, Seals, Foxes, Hares, the Muskox, the Walrus, the Snowy Owl and the Gyrfalcon
Award(s)/Publication Year: no awards presented/2002
Publishing Company: Scholastic
Brief Summary/Book Usage: Terns fly from Antarctic to the Arctic without stopping, that is over 12,000 miles! The spend the the dark months in the Arctic then fly back to Antarctic just as the sun is rising. They are around 1/2 ounce when born and about 2 pounds when fully grown. Caribou eat all the food available when they first arrive at the Tundra then they basically starve and their bodies live off the fat stored inside their bodies until it is time for them to return to Antarctic. At birth they are about 10-26 pound and fully grown they can be between 175-700 pounds. The Snowy Owl unlike many other animals lives in the Arctic year around, it feeds off of hares and lemmings when available. It has great eyesight during the 6 months of darkest it still sees unlike other animals in the Arctic. The owl's wing span can get between 20-27 inches wide. The Ptarmigan is a very interesting animal because depending on the time of year it changes colors; during the winter is it a pearly white, during the summer it turns a brown and yellow, both are used to help camouflage the animal from predators. These birds are very tiny they only get to a pound and half full grown. Whales here are referred to as the "sea canaries" because they love to sing while they hunt for food. When they are born they are at least 5 feet long and weigh between 90-130 pounds. The walrus uses their whiskers to feel for calms on the ocean floor, they usually eat around 6,000 calms a day! The male Walrus usually weighs around 4,000 pounds full grown. Seals can stay under water for an hour without even taking one breath, fat makes up most of a seals body weight and it also keeps them warm in the freezing water. Arctic hares have huge feet that they use as snowshoes it helps me hop across the ice without breaking and falling into the water. The name for a baby hare is leveret. The Arctic fox is so white that most animals do not realized the fox is around until its too late, the fox wraps itself into a ball to keep warm and steals most of its food from other animals such as the polar bear. Polar Bear surprisingly are born around a pound and half and about a foot tall, but when full grown they can kill a seal with one swat, they are extremely strong and are perhaps the strongest of the Arctic animals. How I would use this book in my classroom is during the Winter I could do a lesson on how animals survive or I could teach about the animals in certain kingdoms across the Earth. Either way this book contains many facts about Arctic animals, and it would be a great tool to get kids involved in learning.

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