L found this at the Book Rack and gravitated to it over and over again. A brightly-colored book of opposites. ( )

This book is great for emergent literacy readers. It clearly describes opposite words for the kids to learn and relate to. I really enjoyed the illustrations and the colors. The opposite words give the students an opportunity to make predictions of what will come next. I recommend this book to any Kindergarten class learning opposites. ( )

This book uses a variety of sea creatures and other animals - all depicted with brightly colorful illustrations - to discuss a number of opposites pairs. Each spread shows two of an animal each highlighting one part of an opposites pair (i.e., "elephant young, elephant old" with what appears to be a parent and child elephant together). The following spread features another pair of opposites, which combines with the previous page to complete a simple rhyming couplet. For instance, one spread says "Crocodile wet, crocodile dry." with the next spread stating "Chimpanzee bold, chimpanzee shy." The rhymes allow this relatively simple book to be read in an interesting sing-song way rather than a dull listing of opposites pairs.

The author chose to include a number of opposites pairs beyond the commonplace ones like big and small, tackling ones such as climb and fall and push and pull. This was particularly useful for me in talking to my toddler class about opposites. Several of the other books we used for our discussion including the more basic ones like hot and cold, so it was good to move on to some other words for them to use in describing their environments and see how those words relate to one another. So that was a definite plus to this book, although it's worth noting that this book included some of those simpler opposites pairs also and thus could be used for introducing those as well.

There were a few kind of odds things about this book about which I'm still not sure how to feel. The illustrations are certainly not realistic, which is fine because their enthusiastic brightness fits cheerfully well with the intended audience. But it seemed out of place for the sea urchin illustrations to be the only ones that had an element of collage to them - although I do have to admit that the use of gradient paint swatches for them is brilliant. The story ends with the question, "Far and wide, high and low, where do all these creatures go?" I guess this could lead to open-ended questions/discussions about animal habitats, but my class wasn't really interested once the opposites were gone. The book's final page shows a list of the opposites complete with miniaturized versions of the illustrations for each. I suppose it's useful to have them all in one handy place, but it doesn't seem entirely necessary - if the reader wants to share the opposites with the kids again, they could just as easily start the book from the beginning with the more engaging rhymes.

Nonetheless, despite my reservations about the book, the children in my class absolutely loved it and asked to hear it read over and over again. They also repeatedly went over to the shelf and kept picking this book out to look at on their own. ( )