A Warm Winter Tail

by Carrie A. Pearson, Christina Wald (Illustrator)

Overview

Do you ever wonder how animals stay warm in the winter? Well they wonder how humans do too! In a twist of perspective, wild creatures question if humans use the same winter adaptation strategies that they do. Do they cuddle together in a tree or fly south to Mexico? Take a look through an animal’s eyes and discover the interesting ways that animals cope with the cold winter months throughout this rhythmic story. This fictional story with rhyming text includes a 4-page For Creative Minds section in the back of the book and a 59-page cross-curricular Teaching Activity Guide online. A Warm Winter Tail is vetted by experts and designed to encourage parental engagement. Its extensive back matter helps teachers with time-saving lesson ideas, provides extensions for science, math, and social studies units, and uses inquiry-based learning to help build critical thinking skills in young readers. The Spanish translation supports ELL and dual-language programs. The interactive ebook reads aloud in both English and Spanish with word highlighting and audio speed control to promote oral language skills, fluency, pronunciation, text engagement, and reading comprehension.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781607185383
Publisher:	Arbordale Publishing
Publication date:	08/10/2012
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	404,045
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 9.80(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	AD490L (what's this?)
Age Range:	5 - 6 Years

About the Author

Carrie A. Pearson is a former early elementary teacher and the winner of a SCBWI-Michigan Picture Book Mentorship Award and a Work of Outstanding Promise grant. A Cool Summer Tail, and the companion, A Warm Winter Tail (2013-2014 Great Lakes Great Books Literature Program and a Gelett Burgess Award) follow many of the same animals to describe how they manage the hot summer and cold winter weather. Carrie and her family live in the upper peninsula of Michigan. In addition to Cash Kat, Christina Wald has illustrated Fibonacci Zoo, A Cool Summer Tail, A Warm Winter Tail, Habitat Spy, Little Red Bat, and Henry the Impatient Heron for Arbordale. She also enjoys illustrating a wide variety of toys, games, books, and magazines. From a book that featured hundreds of animals on each page (Look, Find, and Learn: Animals of the World) to games including the Star Wars role playing game series, every assignment covers something new and exciting. In recent years, she has illustrated tons of different animals for books and other publications. Christina enjoys the research aspect of such projects, saying that each new book is a fascinating new learning experience. She often integrates travel to research for her illustrations. She lives in Ohio with her husband and three cats.

Editorial Reviews

"Young readers will learn how these animals adapt to cold temperatures. Double-page illustrations capture the essence of the accompanying text. - Library Media Connection

From the Publisher

A cozy "tail" compares the adaptations animals and humans have for surviving winter's chill. Baby animals ask grown-ups how humans keep warm in the winter. A fox kit asks, "How do humans keep warm in the winter, Mama? / Do they wrap their tails tight / 'round their bodies just right / as heaters to chase out the chill?" Mama answers, "No fur tail for draping, / for covering and caping; / their blankets are cotton and wool." Each baby in turn asks if humans adapt as they do. The wide variety of animals portrayed ensures that most winter adaptations are covered, though camouflage is lacking. The responses vary in their success (or failure) at conveying humans' comparable ways of combatting the cold, and the rhythm sometimes stumbles. The "For Creative Minds" section includes a spread of extensive further information and two pages of activities--matching animal to adaptation (the only place where the animals are identified by captioned thumbnails) and then sorting the animals into their four classes. More activities and learning materials are on the publisher's website. Wald's lifelike illustrations incorporate speech bubbles for the babies' questions and include humorous imaginings of how humans would look with animals' adaptations, e.g., a child with butterfly wings. A good first look at adaptations that stands above others despite its sometimes imperfect comparisons to humans. (Informational picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Reviews