Day 24 of Summer 2019 Bookaday Challenge: Birds of a Feather: Bowerbirds and Me

Vlog Transcript Below

Slide 1: Hi, Everybody! Welcome back to the #Bookaday Challenge. Today I will be talking about Birds of a Feather: Bowerbirds and Me by Susan Roth as well as other excellent picture books about birds that you might want to have in your classroom.

Slide 2: Birds of a Feather: Bowerbirds and Me by Susan Roth is absolutely gorgeous. The artwork is stunning and that alone is reason enough to have it in your classroom. But it’s also a great book to have in hand because you can teach your students about adaptations and how animals have adaptations to help them survive. Male bowerbirds build nests, and they place shiny objects in and around the nests to attract a mate. Of course, this helps them survive. Also, this book is a comparison between bowerbirds and the author/illustrator, Susan Roth. She explains how her hands, and when she uses the tool the tweezers, are very similar to the bird’s feet and his beak. This is an excellent way to get students thinking about how we’re not all that different from the animals that live around us. Finally, this is a great way to introduce your students to the compare/contrast text structure.

Slide 3: Melissa Stewart is the one who told me about Birds of a Feather: Bowerbirds and Me. She has also written an excellent book about birds called Feathers Not Just for Flying, and it is illustrated by Sarah Brannen. This is an excellent book as well to facilitate a discussion about adaptations. Stewart explains the different uses of various feathers. She uses similes in her text to explain that some feathers are used for sunscreen while others are used for umbrellas. This comparison to everyday objects makes the text very accessible for readers. Lastly, Sarah Brannen’s illustrations also engage the reader because she made it look as if the book were a child’s scrapbook.

Slide 4: Another excellent book by Melissa Stewart is Melissa’a A Place for Birds. I mentioned Melissa’s A Place for series earlier this summer, but I wanted to mention it again because it’s truly an excellent resource. The main text is cause and effect, the sidebars are problem and solution, and this is also an excellent text for teaching about the author’s intent or purpose. My class has had many excellent discussions about this book.

Slide 5: Another book that mentions birds is Flower Talk​ by Sara Levine. Obviously the main subject of this book is flowers, not birds. However, birds are mentioned in this book. In fact, birds are attracted to red flowers which is why the background of this slide is red. This is a great book to have on hand because your students will learn how many different animals are pollinators, and they will learn how important pollinators are for a flower’s survival. 

Slide 6: Another great book about birds is Hawk Rising by Maria Gianferrari and illustrated by Brian Floca. We are fortunate to have a hawk that resides around our school. Often times during the day, my students will look outside the window and see the hawk perched nearby. This book compares a girl getting up in the morning to a father hawk getting up in the morning. Throughout the day, the girl watches the hawk through binoculars, and at the end of the day the hawk brings home supper to the nest. At the end of the last school year, we also saw the hawk bring home supper to the nest. It was slightly traumatic for my class for sure, but it was a wonderful opportunity to understand how the natural world works. I think my students will really connect to this text.

Slide 7: The last book I’m going to talk about is not out yet, but it’s coming in October. It’s called Bird Count by Susan Edwards Richmond, and it’s illustrated by Stephanie Fizer Coleman. This is a really fun book to have in your classroom. Many students don’t think about bird watching in the winter. They think about it in the summer. This book introduces students to the Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count. People go out and see how many different types of birds they can count. If your students think bird watching in only available to them in the spring, summer or fall, they will definitely rethink that concept when they read Bird Count by Susan Edwards Richmond.