Read Aloud Thursday–Around the World on Eighty Legs by Amy Gibson

 Our little geography study is still limping along, but this trip around the world has been derailed several times due to multiple trips to the swimming pool.  We’re still reading good books, though, and I still have high hopes that I’ll eventually get around to posting our picks for the continents of Africa and Australia.  Until then, I want to share a terrific new poetry book that goes along perfectly with our summer school studies: Around the World on Eighty Legs: Animal Poemsby Amy Gibson. 

This book of animal poems is divided into five different regions:  South America (and Beyond), the Arctic and Antarctic, Africa, Asia, and Australia.  Obviously missing are Europe and North America, but according to Amy Gibson’s comment on this review at Cracking the Cover, there will possibly be a follow-up volume of more poems about animals that are a little closer to home.  The poems range in type from concrete poems to take-offs of a popular kids’ song.  Since all the poems are about animals, this book is full of kid-appeal.  Even my eldest, who vows that she “hates poetry,” can’t hide her interest in the strange and unusual creatures that appear in this volume:  the chinchilla, the proboscis monkey, the Australian desert frog, and the dingo, to name just a few.  Here’s a sample of one of my favorites– “Hippo”:

When hippo

wants to take a dip, oh,

how the waves

do crash and roll.

Worse yet, when hippo

wants a sip–OH,

NO!  There goes

the water hole. 

Daniel Salmieri‘s illustrations are a nice accompaniment for the poems–they’re whimsical, almost cartoonish, and help to capture the fun spirit of the rhymes.  This is a really fun volume of poetry that makes the perfect tie-in for any study of animals (a “Menagerie of Facts” at the end of the book provides a few sentences of information about each animal) or geography (including a nice, colorful map at the beginning of the book). 

(Scholastic, 2011)

Related Links:

• Amy Gibson’s website
• Daniel Salmieri’s website
• Review at Poetry for Children
• Review at Book Dragon
• My review of Around the World in Eighty Tales, a review I can’t help but link back to due to the title alone 🙂
• My review of a book of poetry about elephants:  Cousins of Clouds by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
• My review of Scranimals by Jack Prelutsky

I’m linking this review up tomorrow at A Year of Literacy Coaching, this week’s host of Poetry Friday. 

Poetry or prose, it matters not–share your read-alouds with all of us by linking up your RAT blog post in the comments!

Have a terrific Read Aloud Thursday, everyone!