Heather Daylight

A cyclic recount of life at the lake during 24 hours.
■ Nonfiction cyclic recount
■ Third person
■ Past tense
■ Detailed descriptive writing causing reflective reading
■ Time sequence in two-hour intervals, clock and text match
■ Vocabulary probably unfamiliar: sun-warmed, dunked, swatted,
twelve o’clock noon
■ Range of verbs describing action and creating mood
■ Alliteration: swished and swatted, dipped and dunked
■ Many of the concepts cannot be illustrated
■ Decoding and comprehending unfamiliar vocabulary
■ Decoding skills: blends, syllables, compound words, hyphen
changing function of words (sun-warmed as adjective)
■ Inferential viewing of illustrations, understanding mood
■ Understanding setting as time and place
■ Understanding time sequence providing a text framework
■ Understanding how the text influences reading pace and
thought
■ Making associations with words of similar meaning
■ Understanding… (meer)

"At the Lake" is a nonfiction, picture book that describes what happens in the natural world around a small lake during a 24 hour period. A clock reveals the time change at the bottom of the full-color, illustrated pages. The beautiful scenes and text describe the many animals that visit the lake during the day and night. A Nonfiction Note at the end of the book explains the difference between nocturnal and diurnal animals. "At the Lake" is a wonderful introduction to the natural world for beginning readers (time, animals, nature).

[This review was written by the author, Alvin Robert Cunningham]… (meer)