I really enjoyed the book Why Are Animals Blue?. This informational picture book contained vivid photographs, and many key features that made the book enjoyable for all readers. The photographs in the book were very detailed and enhanced the text. The photo that stood out to me was the one of the blue-ringed octopus. The description of the poisonous rings corresponded with the picture, making it easier to tell where the poison comes from.

Many of the text features also made this book interesting. On each animal, the author provided labels, ensuring that the reader knew what the author was talking about. Another feature was bolded vocab terms along with a glossary. Difficult terms, such as prey and predator, were bolded and defined in the glossary which was a useful tool. The author also used kid friendly language along with academic language. For example, she said, “When enemies see these bright colors, they know to stay away” (10). The word enemies would be an example of academic language, while the sentence is still particularly easy for most readers.

Another feature that I thought was a great addition was the “Where do these blue animals live?” section at the end of the book. For each animal, there was a map indicating where in the world you could find each one. This allows for a geography lesson to be incorporated into language arts.

The main idea of the book was to inform students about different blue animals and why some of their features are blue. For example, on the page about the shark, the author talked about how they live in oceans and are considered predators to many animals. The brief descriptions give readers a general idea about the animal, and at the end, the reader is able to determine where the animal actually lives in the world. ( )

I really liked this book. I liked everything about how the book was set up and I loved looking over the book a second time just to look at the pictures. I think for a teacher using this book for a class it's useful to start off the book with the contents so students can get to what ever section they want to quickly without having to flip through every single page. Starting off next with words to know preps the reader for different terms that will be mentioned more than once in this book. For students wanting to know more about these blue animals or specific ones, the book gives two pages worth of extra places for them to get more information. The photographs on each page are large and a very bright. Some of the animals have blue that's a bit harder to see so having these photographs so blown up helps. I think the author does a successful job at teaching us about these different blue animals around the world. ( )