Penguins! National Geographic Kids

        The kids in my class love penguins and a lot of people have been telling me to check out the National Geographic Kids nonfiction series, so I decided to combine the two and read Penguins! by Anne Schriber from the National Geographic Kids series. I really, really liked this book! I think Schriber did an excellent job of using easy language to talk about penguins, while still keeping the writing interesting. Unlike many children's nonfiction picture books, that are horribly written, this one was actually fun to read. I learned a lot too! For instance, did you know that penguins usually live in colonies of millions of other penguins and the all huddle together when it gets cold? And did you know that they leap out of the water when they want to swim faster and that it is called porpoising?
       The other thing I liked about this book was that it explained any unusual terms to students. Also, although it did have text bubbles interspersed with the pictures (a trend I have noticed in children's nonfiction which often distracts me), it was only a little and was formatted in a non-distracting way.  Also the pictures matched the text and were always interesting and relevant to what the author was talking about. Another pet peeve I have with children's nonfiction is that it often seems like they choose pictures/photos at random to put in the book, but there was none of that in this book. The photography was beautiful as well.
     I will definitely have this book, and others from the series, in my class library and I will definitely use them in my instruction.  Also, if you are interested you should go to the National Geography Kids website; it is definitely worth exploring!