Friday, November 14, 2008

The Water Hole- Counting Picture Book

The Water Hole is a counting book for children. The only problem with this is that some of the words that it uses would not be understood by children who are just learning how to count. Some of the words that the books uses are "delectable", "wallowing", "floundering", "fiscal year", and "lumbering". It would take so long to try and explain these words to young children that it would take away from them being taught counting. This book would be more helpful for teaching older students about droughts and seasons. Each page shows the watering hole getting smaller because more and more animals are drinking out if and and there has been no rain. The drought gets so bad that all of the animals have to leave and the land dries up. In the end, the drought ends and the rain comes. All of the animals return to the water. This would also be a great story for teaching about different parts of the world. Every picture is from a different area and has a famous monument from that place in the background. The last page of the book explains what each of these pages represents. The places include: Africa, India, South America, Himalayas, North America, rivers and streams, China, Europe, Galapagos Islands, and Australia. I did not realize this as I was reading the book. After I read the last page and found this out, I went back through and studied the pictures a little bit more. Every picture has such great detail and hidden information. Graeme Base's stories definitely have more to them than what first meets the eye.

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