Two intrepid librarians

Two intrepid librarians review the best nonfiction books for children

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

How to Swallow a Pig

How to Swallow a Pig: Step-by-Step Advice from the Animal Kingdom
by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015
Grades K-5
ISBN: 978-0-544-31365-1

In classic Jenkins/Page style, How to Swallow a Pig captivates readers with colorful, cut paper collage and interesting science facts. This highly engaging and informative nonfiction picture books uses a sequence text structure to explain the steps animals take to hunt for prey, build homes, and defend themselves. On the Celebrate Science blog, Melissa Stewart describes the text structure as "How-to Sequence Structure" with an "Expository Style."

As with other science picture books by Jenkins and Page, readers will be motivated to pick up the book and read it for pleasure while teachers will want to use the book as a mentor text for expository writing. Readers will enjoy learning how crows crack nuts, how armadillos defend themselves, and how pythons suffocate pigs then swallow them whole. Each step in the process is numbered and accompanied by cut paper illustrations with varying textures and colors. Science-minded readers will appreciate the additional information about each animal located in the back of the book. Pair How to Swallow a Pig with other nonfiction books with sequence text structures such as How to Clean a Hippopotamus or No Monkeys, No Chocolate.

The reviewer received a copy of the book from the publisher.

1 comment:

  1. I love Steve Jenkins, his books are consistent kid favourites at my library, but I have yet to read this one! I've been seeing it on a lot of blogs lately, so I definitely need to remedy this situation.

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