A Good Egg

An Egg is Quiet

By Dianna Aston

Illustrated by Sylvia Long

Chronicle Books, 2006

ISBN#  0-8118-4428-5

Nonfiction picture book

 

 An Egg is Quiet uses metaphors to describe the wide variety of shapes, colors, and sizes that eggs of many animals display. Details about specific eggs are given under the true-to-life drawings. The spread of eggs at the start of the books corresponds with the closing spread of animals hatched from each egg.

 

  

An egg is quiet.
It sits there,
under its mother’s feathers…
on top of its father’s feet…
buried beneath the sand.
Warm.
Cozy.

 

 

Activity 1

Show and discuss the life cycles of the three animals on the spread, “An egg is giving.” Talk about how the process repeats itself.

 Have your students create an image of themselves as a newborn baby and draw their own life cycle through adulthood.

 

Activity 2

Use the Enchanted Learning site: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/butterfly/activities/printouts/lifecycle.shtml to trace the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly. Duplicate the page and have the students color each stage of the life cycle correctly. To save paper, put the image on an overhead transparency and have the students draw their own images of the Monarch life cycle, and then color them correctly.

 

 

 

 The teacher’s guide is excellent, particularly the simple experiments. Look for it on the Chronicle site.

 

 

 

Eggs by Marilyn Singer and Emma Stevenson also contains nice information.

 

 

National Science Standard: Life cycles of organisms

 

Simply Fabulous

 

Using simple, rhyming text and rich illustrations, Fabulous Fishes introduces early readers to a wide variety of fish and their underwater habitats.

 

Author-illustrator Susan Stockdale

 ISBN: 978-1-56145-429-7 

 

“Shiny fish, spiny fish,
fish that hitch a ride.
Flatfish, catfish,
fish that ride the tide.”

 

Activity 1: Review the names of the fish in the book. Ask the students to create categories and group the fish into the different categories. Challenge them to decide on several categories in which to classify the fish. Categories may include things like color, habits, habitats, living in groups or solo, shape, or size. Some examples: Fish with yellow on their bodies, fish that live in deepwater,or fish we don’t usually eat. Group the fish into their categories and share them with the class.

 

Activity 2: Read the book again and ask the students to notice where the fish live. Using the information in the back matter, talk about why each fish lives where it does and how the environment helps each live in that particular niche.

 

National science standard: Table 6.8–characteristics of organisms, organisms and environments

 

Visit Susan Stockdale to see more of her work.

Visit Shirley Smith Duke or Peachtree to find the teacher’s guide for Fabulous Fishes that Shirley wrote.