Customer Reviews

Is This a House for Hermit Crab?

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Simple, sweet story of a little hermit crab who has outgrown his shell and crawls, "scritch, scratch," along the beach in search of a new home. He tries out a variety of items; including a tin can, which is too noisy and a plastic bucket, which is too big. He becomes entangled in a net and is chased by a pricklepine fish before he finally finds just the right home and "snuggles" in. Beautiful illustrations! My 2-year-old and I both loved this book, and we are now the proud new owners of a pet hermit crab

I've used this book with first and third grade students that are studying needs of animals and animal homes. The students love the predictability of the hermit crab's sounds. It opens up the discussion to habitats and why animals need certain characteristics in their homes. Great book!

This is not only an amazingly well-written book, it also has some of the most beautiful illustrations around! Is This a House for Hermit Crab? has a repeating text that kids will soon love to say along with you. McDonald's use of onomatopia is a chance to teach children about figurative language. The repeating words "scritch-scratch" are used to describe the hermit crab crawling along the shore. You can call children's attention to these words by having them scratch a stick arcoss a small strip of sandpaper as these words are read aloud. This book became a read-aloud favorite in my classroom. Another great hermit crab book is Moving Day by Robert Kalan, also available at amazon.com.

I am a first grade teacher who has hermit crabs as a class pet. My students love books about hermit crabs, both fiction and nonfiction. Although this book is similar to Eric Carle's A House for Hermit Crab, I still really like it and am very glad I purchased it for my class!

You can tell that a lot of work went into the beautiful illustrations. They are absolutely beautiful. As far as the story goes, its decent. A crab needs a new house and tries a few houses out, finding them flawed in one way or another. Then all of a sudden there's a plot twist and the crab is being hunted by its aquatic enemy. Somehow the slow thing outruns the predator fish and hides in an empty shell. The shell is so comfortable that after the fish is gone the crab declares the shell its new home.

A plot twist in a book this short. Who'd have thought?

I think children can feel the feelings of finding a new home, too, when they are reading IS THIS A HOUSE FOR HERMIT CRAB. Another book on hermit crabs with a little different twist is P. HERMIT CLAIMS A CASTLE (also available on amazon.com) in which this hermit crab, Prince Hermit, has the challenge of getting back to his natural habitat after he has been taken out of the tidepool. The environmental message that a marine creature's survival depends on his staying in his habitat makes this book important to children who don't know this and to the hermit crab fans of IS THERE A HOUSE FOR HERMIT CRAB who would like more books to read on this subject.