by Yukihisa Tokuda and illustrated by Kiyoshi Takahashi
La Jolla, CA: Kane/Miller Books, 2003
If I had had books like I'm a Pill Bug when I was younger, I probably would have read so many more informational texts! The flow of this book is so natural, and I could really picture using it as a read aloud in my classroom. As I read, I imagined the points that the kids would react to either because it was funny ("Do you know what this is? Do you know who I am? A ball? No, not a ball.") or unexpected ("Our appetite is huge. We can eat leaves as big as this. As soon as we eat, we poop--lots and lots of square shaped poop.") Fun details and sentence structures like these make sense to children and engage them in the text even without an actual story behind it.
Told from the perspective of a pill bug, this text starts out with an attention-picture of a pill bug in a ball, and then a life-size illustration on the next page. The illustrations themselves are very child-oriented. The simple drawings and natural color palate help the readers to focus on the information being shared with them.
I really loved this book. I was smiling along with it as I read! For a unit on creatures students can find in their backyards, it would be a great introduction. One detail about this book that I liked is that at the end, Tokuda tells the reader how to scientifically observe pill bugs--by touching them (carefully) and even by creating a habitat for it in a plastic container. This is a great extension from text to experimentation that would be easy to set up in a science class.
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