“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.” ~C.S. Lewis
Bibliographic Information: Henkes, K. (2009). Birds. New York, NY: Greenwillow Books.
Grade Level Equivalent: 1.4
Synopsis: Look up into the sky and you might catch the glimpse of a bird! Kevin Henkes book Birds introduces children to birds of all colors, shapes, and sizes. This picture book uses bright, bold illustrations to expand reader’s imagination about what different things such as birds as the clouds and colored tail feathers acting as crayons look like.
Rationale for Classroom Use: This book would be great to use in the classroom to show how illustrations reflect the text. The teacher can explain how the illustrator interpreted the text to create an illustration on each page when reading the book. Afterwards, each pair of students can be given a blank page with one sentence from the text. As illustrator’s, they must create an illustration on the blank page that correlates with their sentence. The teacher can then compile a classroom book of Birds with student illustrations!
Common Core Connection:
RLK.7: With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the story in which they appear.
RL.K.6: With prompting and support, name the author and illustrator of a story and define the role of each in telling the story.