Billy the Kid by: Theodore Taylor

Billy the Kid is kind of a tall tale but still considered a non-fiction book. This is definitely a more advanced novel for older elementary school children and even up into junior high or possibly even high school. It is a long and challenging read but most certainly a good one. There are little known "facts" about Billy the Kid but hearing his story is entertaining and interesting even for the most advanced readers. It tells the tale of a young cowboy who terrified everyone he came into contact with and even though he was so young was the most feared cowboy in town. The legend of Billy the Kid is a fascinating one that young kids will be interested in. This is a good read but is not for readers who have trouble holding attention or need pictures to help them along. Due to the length of the book which is well over 150 pages it will likely be a book you could assign to children to read over a good length of time and maybe do responses chapter by chapter. A challenging book but a great story, check it out.

Trains by: Anne Rockwell

I chose this book because I know that Anne Rockwell has written hundreds of children's books and I hadn't blogged about one yet. Trains is a really simple book about trains that is intended for small children. I really enjoyed reading it because it is easy and fun. The illustrations go right along with the pictures which would make it really easy for a child to follow along and relate what they are reading to what they see. I think that is a good skill for young children to learn and it will help them in the development of reading and moving on to more advanced picture books. I really enjoy Anne Rockwell's literature and this one is something I could see myself reading to my nephew because he is two and is obsessed with trains. I think she does a good job of writing about things she knows children are interested in and that fascinate them.

All Bout Sharks by: Jim Arnosky

I chose this book because I read an older non-fictional book about sharks this week as well and I wanted to see how they differed. All About Sharks was a great book full of lots of information and pictures. As important as the information was the way the information is portrayed is even more important. The layout of the book was great with all the pictures and statistics being intertwined. It gives the reader a chance to stray away from informational books that are just in long paragraph form and throw a lot of information at you at once. It gives the information species by species and gives pictures and side notes about each one. This type of informational book gives readers a great chance to learn about something and also have fun doing it. I am fascinated with sharks and wildlife and I think that stemmed from enjoying reading about them as a child and I hope that children would read this book and maybe pick up an interest. I feel like anything this book talked about, due to the way it was laid out, would give a children some kind of spark or interest in the subject. The author did a great job and I am interested if he has written any other books similar to this on different animals or subjects.

How Many Teeth? by: Paul Showers

I really really really enjoyed this book. It was perfect to explain the process of growing and losing your teeth to young children. It starts off with a baby and says she has no teeth, then moves to a toddler who has 6 teeth, then to a boy who has 20 teeth, then to grown ups who have 32 teeth. It is a really interesting way to go about giving information about this. It has great language and even has a rhyming scheme that makes it more fun to read. This would work great for children to read or even as a read aloud by a parent or teacher. It has great illustrations that are eye-catching and even show the actual process of losing and growing teeth. I really recommend this book and think it is a lot of fun. It is interesting that the other informational books I have read this week were more geared towards an older elementary school student and this one is definitely directed at children of younger ages. This showed me that informational books do not only have to be for older children and can be as simple as how many teeth have have. 2 thumbs up.

Australian Dinosaurs by: Marilyn Pride

Australian Dinosaurs was definitely not the type of book I thought it would be when I looked at the cover. I expected it to go through the dinosaurs and give pictures and brief descriptions and characteristics. Instead it was extremely in depth and gave a wealth of information about each dinosaur to the point where it was overwhelming. To be perfectly honest after I read about half of the book I had to put it away because the amount of information they gave was just too much, and if it was too much for me I can imagine it would be too much for the 7-11 recommended age group the book was intended for. Also the language used was hard to understand and some of the words were hard for me to pronounce or comprehend so I doubt a seven year old would be able to get through much of the book. It would perhaps work as a read along but I still feel that the amount of information given is too vast for a child to understand fully. The pictures are nice but the font is so small that it makes the length of it overwhelming. If you want to go strictly on volume of information I guess it is good but other than that this is not a book I would read to a child or have them attempt to read on their own.

The Great White Shark by: Carl Green & William Sanford

This is an older book and clearly is intended for a slightly older elementary school student. It starts out with a short story about an encounter with a great white shark, then as the book goes on it turns into an informational book. It gives facts and statistics about great white sharks and also shows actual photographs of the sharks. I think this would be an interesting book for children to read that were interested in wildlife and in particular sharks. I think that sharks are such an unknown creature to us because of the area we live in that most people have little information about them. A common theme among people is being afraid of sharks because of their lack of knowledge. I think that books like this for children can be very helpful because they give children useful information about subjects they otherwise wouldn't learn about except from television. This type of informational book can be very beneficial to a young child and also may start a hobby or interest they will carry throughout their lives.

The Class Trip from the Black Lagoon by: Mike Thaler

This was a very entertaining novel by Mike Thaler. It was all about a class trip that a little boy was going to take. For almost half the book it just builds the trip up and talks about how much fun the trip is going to be even though he doesn't know where they are going or what they are going to do. Then when finally find out where they are going the story gets really wild. They go on quite a voyage in an airplane and then they parachute then they trudge through the jungle. The author does a really good job of giving the reader a visual image of what's going on and what everything looks like. He also uses word play throughout the book that is very original and makes it more interesting to read. He plays on things like Pizza Mutt instead of Pizza Hut and when talking about watching for animal droppings he says hippo-potty-mess. These kinds of things can help keep children interested in reading the book and makes it more fun for them. I really do think children in elementary school would enjoy this book because I know I enjoyed reading it and thought it was entertaining. The best part is the creativity and imaginativeness involved with the book. First of all because of the child in the book's imagination and more importantly because it gives good cues and prompts to get the reader to imagine what it would be like. I really enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend it!