Bats

Bats

Author and Illustrator: Gail Gibbons

Genre: Nonfiction

Major Awards: None

Grade Level: Pre-K-4

Summary: In this book, the author provides tons of information about many different kinds of bats as well as characteristics that they all share. Among typical information about bats such as that they are nocturnal and us echolocation, the book goes even more in depth by labeling the parts of a bat, providing the sizes of different types of bats, how fast they can fly, and how they hibernate and migrate. At the end of the book, there is a final page that contains extra facts about bats.

Evaluation: I love Gail Gibbons' work and would love to have this book in my classroom. It has a lot of good information and is a great way to get children to explore the nonfiction genre.

Because this book contains factual and explanatory information, I think it can truly range from very young ages through upper elementary. I think a lot students love to learn about animals, especially when the illustrations help explain the text and when there is not too much text on one page. Upper grades could even use this as a research tool for a project.

I don't know if it is still in today's curriculum, but I remember doing a bat unit during my elementary school years. I think this would obviously be a great aid to that kind of unit. I also think Halloween would be a great time to read this to children or have them read it because it helps them understand that bats are not scary like society has portrayed them to be. No matter how I use it, I just know I want to have this for my students.