Title: Poetrees
Author: Douglas Floridan
Publisher: Beach Lane Books
Year of publication: 2010
Photographer: Douglas Floridn
Genre: Science
Age Level: 6 up
Theme: elementary science
Synopsis: This book consists of many and different poems of trees. Florian focuses on trees (seeds, bark, leaves, roots, and tree rings) and introduces readers to 13 species from around the world. An oversize, double-page illustration accompanies each poem. Some of the poems are read lengthwise, which enables the artist to highlight the awesome height and size of trees. In the book, Douglas Florian focuses on several types of and parts of a tree, with poems about seeds, roots, bark, leaves, and tree rings. For instance, the tree rings show how trees grow; the wide rings grow fast while the narrow rings grow slow. The poems are solid in their meter and rhyme and are distinctive. They give a mixture of information, wordplay, and artistic invention. Douglas Florian generated the pictures of the trees on primed paper bags allowing him to combine interesting textures, chalk, colored pencils, stamps, and oil pastels. In addition to familiar oaks and birches, Floridn’s poetrees also explore more unusual trees, including the dragon tree, monkey puzzle tree, and baobab. The poem about seed describes what is inside the picture of the seed in the book; he states that inside the seed one will find a steam and leaf that grow with rain into a trunk and branch and leaf and seed that starts again. The book is designed to be held and read vertically, which allows Douglas to showcase the height of trees like the giant sequoia ("Never destroy a/ Giant sequoia") or banyan from treetop to root bottom.
About the photographer: Douglas Floridn
Pre-reading activities: I will show the seeds and pictures of different trees to the students and tell them how they grow.
Post-reading activities: Children will be asked to write a brief poem during science class. They will be asked cut the shape of a leaf of any kind out of papers of their choices and write the poem on it.
Reflection: This book is very useful and educative for children. It has variety of poems for children to choose and learn. Though the book is meant for children, I recommend adults to read it because it is an interesting book, a kind of aide memoir for adults and parents who read it. It is a great reminder science book for those who are science inclined and those who like nature. The book is useful because it is filled with facts about the trees described in the poems; it also includes a brief bibliography and author's note describing the author’s lifelong fascination with trees. It is of great value reading Douglas’ poetrees because the Glossary at the end of the book explains what every tree that he wrote about is. What I like most about the book is the origin of trees and how every tree grows.
Works cited:
No comments:
Post a Comment