Sandra Iversen

This very basic book shows how birds fly south for the winter and return home for the warmer months. However, buyer beware, it does not use the words "migration," "south," "climate," or any of the seasons at all - nor does it even mention the specific birds (Canada geese) by name. The text literally just describes what the birds fly over (i.e., trees, mountains) while the illustrations show these in the fall and then again in the spring. I struggled with rating this as high as I did given that I feel the book provides little information. However, for my purposes, it did exceedingly well. Our class had been talking a great deal about migration already, so this book served to further reinforce what we already knew. Even so, I felt like I had to add a lot of explanation to this book as I read it to allow the children to connect the text with what we already learned and to really draw the children in to examine how the illustrations were showing different seasons. Still, the short and simple sentences of the book made it a slim enough read to hold the attention of the young toddlers in my class (and should be relatively easy for beginning readers to follow on their own).… (meer)