"Babies on the Go"

Babies on the Go

Written by: Linda Ashman

Illustrated by: Jane Dyer

Published by Harcourt, Inc. in NY in 2003

ISBN: 0-15-201894-8

Genre: Picture Book, Informational Text

Reading Level: Kindergarten

Activity Level: Grades K, 2

Summary: This book takes readers along the journey with twenty animals and human babies and details how each one begins to grown before walking. this book teaches about bats, lions, deer, giraffes, beavers, etc. It talks about how some animals live in their mom's pouches before venturing out on their own, how some immediately stand and walk, and how some ride on their parents backs. It then compares that to human babies who ride in strollers until they are able to walk.

Response: This book is great for introducing children to many unique and interesting animals. It can give them knowledge about how humans and some animals are alike and different and how animal parents are as loving to their children as human parents. Each page tells of a different animal in 5-10 words with each line rhyming with the next.

I love that this book does not use just the basic animals like elephants and deer that children would already know, but also introduces them to knew animals such as the anteater, beaver, sloth, and opossum, that young children may not know much about at this age. This work also provides a listing of the names of each of these animals along with their pictures in the back of the book for reference.

The illustrations in this work are very beautiful. Each single-page spread is filled with beautiful details such as the polka dots on the dad's socks who is pushing the baby in the stroller, the fur on the koalas, and the feathers on the swan.

Teaching Connections: This book, along with an early introduction to Venn Diagrams about similarities and differences between this animals, created during a class discussion after the students and teacher read this book together with the use of a document scanner, can help Kindergartners meet science objective 1.01 Observe and describe the similarities and differences among animals including: Structure. Growth. Changes. Movement.

This book could also help second graders meet science competency objective 1.01 Describe the life cycle of animals including: Birth. Developing into an adult. Reproducing. Aging and death. After the students easily read this book to themselves, the teacher can put students into groups and have each group choose one of the animals in this book to further research. They will look in children's encyclopedias and use other resources, with the help of the teacher, to discover about how their animal is born, develops, and reproduces. They will present this material and any other interesting facts they found about their animal, using the notes they made, to the class in order to meet this objective.

What Students Learn: With this book and the activities children can learn about several of the similarities and differences between animals and between animals and humans. They will also begin to learn about good research skills and about gathering information, making presentations, and much about the development and lives of common animals. In addition, students also learn about rhyming phrases from this book!

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