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Gooey Jellyfish
January 30, 2008
You must get
Gooey Jellyfish by Natalie Lunis 
immediately. Stop your reading and make a note! Did you know that 95% of all animals are invertebrates? Yet, my teachers choose mammals first when doing research. Invertebrates of the world unite! Demand more time and attention!
Thankfully the publishers at Bearport are acting. They have created this nearly perfect nonfiction title. I say this from a USER (reader) point of view not from a scientific viewpoint because I am talking from readers' viewpoints today.
This book is an excellent read-aloud. I have student testimonials ready. They loved every aspect including the glossary, the Read More section, and especially the notes on invertebrates in the back. Since it's first read-aloud, I have had to fight to reclaim the title to share with another class. They keep reading and re-reading each page. Just wait until they discover the
internet activities and information pages.
The illustrations are large enough for whole class read-alouds, but offer details for second and third individual reading. The bubbles of text information offer tidbits that amaze the listener. The photos perfectly match the text descriptions. AMAZINGLY MATCH! When you read that "The largest jellyfish is larger than a person," the main illustration on the page shows a diver in relationship to an enormous jellyfish. The teachers immediately started thinking how they could fold paper to the correct size for an experiential effect.
I do want to ask the publisher this question: "Did the Australian box jellyfish sting the person pictured on pages 16-17?" We want to know! After you told us this is "the most dangerous of all" and that "its tentacles hold enough poison to kill 60 people." my students screamed "Get out of the water fast!" I think those first grade boys have a pool on whether the person died or not from just standing there. I'd love to be able to reassure them that no models were killed during the photographing of this book.
Crawling Crabs
Gooey Jellyfish
Prickly Sea Stars
Slimy Sea Slugs
Squirting Squids
Squishy Sponges
Come on, look at those titles! Admit it. You liked saying "Squishy sponges." You can't wait to see if the squids are really squirting people and you know the perfect group of students to scream "Yewww! Yuuuuck!" when you show them the slimy sea slugs. I could bring in a hermit crab to crawl around while reading Crawling Crabs. The possibilities for booktalking these are racing through my head.
Yikes! I'd better get my order into the computer for the rest before you finish reading this blogpost and snatch up all the series. Later!
Posted by Diane Chen on January 30, 2008 | Comments (0)
