~ borrowed from the library

WHAT'S IN THE SKY, DEAR DRAGON is a cute little book at the beginning First Grade Reading level.

And though I'm certainly a fan of many of Margaret Hillert's practice readers I particularly like this one because it's more of a thinking book than some of the others. The theme is is the sky and what you can find there. The story begins with a father and son out at night. They look at the moon, and soon their attention is diverted to other sources of light. For example, stars, fireflies, fireworks. From there they go to the next day where mom joins them and they talk about other things we see when we look up: the sun, clouds and rain, rainbows, birds, planes. The story ends with the boy and dragon in a plane. You see, now they are in the sky.

Lots to do with this book. For older babies and toddlers you can use this book to name colors and objects like the sun, flowers, rainbows, etc. There are many colors to define.

With preschoolers you can begin discussing the science in the book. That the sun is a star, that owls have eyes adapted to night hunting, as well as the fact that plants need clouds and rain as well as sunshine to grow.

Here's some sample text from various pages. I'll divide the pages off with dashed lines.

What's in the sky, Dear Dragon?
What's in the sky?
We can see some things at night.

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No, no.
They are not moons.
They are stars.
They give us light, too.

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The sun is big, big, big.
It gives us light, and helps things grow.

Again, this book is at the beginning 1st Grade reading level. Teachers should note that there is an Accelerated Reader test for this book. It has 257 words. Available in Spanish. ( )