Customer Reviews

Gray Squirrel at Pacific Avenue - a Smithsonian's Backyard Book (with audiobook cassette tape) (Smithsonian's Backyard/Boxed Book and Cassette)

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

For those of us surrounded by the omnipresent gray squirrel they seem banal and often a pest. But for my inner city Latino children in a bilingual first grade, this book made real the interaction of animals in a suburban neighborhood. They understood how the squirrel interacts with other animals - often stealing their food; how the squirrel helps grow trees by hiding acorns (we learned about acorns the same week). The picture of the squirrel eating acorns was perfect. We learned how birds depend on feeders for their food. The illustrations were lovely and inventive - they especially liked the photo of the squirrel sleeping with his tail over his head for a shade (we acted it out with our hands) and the dog chasing the squirrel and cat. The neighborhood was unfamiliar to them as the housing was very different but they loved the animals. This book was a most positive teaching aide.

I'm a preschool teacher and wanted an informational book for our unit on squirrels. This book fell short in a couple of ways- too small in size for a large group of children to see the pictures well, although the illustrations were quite nice, and not a whole lot of information about squirrels. The story was not all tht interesting- I had to elaborate on it to hold the interest of a group of 4 year olds.