Prairie Storms

Prairie Storms

By Darcy Pattison

Illustrated by Kathleen Rietz

Sylvan Dell, 2011

ISBN: 9781607181293

Ages 4-9

Picture book

“Low, thick clouds dump snow, covering the prairies. Whistling winds shape and mold the snow into drifts and hollows. The prairie chicken claws into a drift, digging a winter roost.”

Darcy Pattison, known for her fiction, changes her writing direction in this book about animals, the prairie, and the variety of weather that blasts the prairie grasslands. Tracing the weather month by month, Prairie Storms features a different animal on each spread as it survives, aided by its specific adaptations to this habitat. The language is lovely and engaging for young children.

Soft art by Rietz portrays the animals in a realistic manner within their prairie environment and surroundings. As in other Sylvan Dell books, this book has a six page set of activities relating to prairies, animals, and weather that will encourage discussion and opportunities to reread the book. The book would be a good one for story time, studies of habitats, weather, or animals.

Activity

Find out more about each of the animals named in the book. Divide the children into groups and have them look up interesting facts about the animal. Make a poster showing a picture of that animal, the facts, and the animal in the month’s prairie weather from the book. Present the information.

National Geographic has good animal information.

The website for Prairie Storms gives a number of activities and lesson plans that accompany the book.

The site also has a coloring page link.

Roberta at Growing with Science has a great set of weather activites and a vocabulary list.

National Science Standard: organisms in their environment

Ebook provided by author Darcy Pattison