Animals Nobody Loves

Title:  Animals Nobody Loves

Author: Seymour Simon

Illustrator: Multiple photo credits

Publisher: SeaStar Books

Genre: Information Book

Level: Primary

Number of Pages: 48

Pub. Date: 2001

Summary: This book is all about ‘animals that few people like and nobody loves.’ It gives information about many animals that have stories told about them and people scared of them. It is written to give people true facts about these animals so people can be educated about them and the dangers that they can be. For example, the man-o-war looks like a jellyfish, but it is actually a very dangerous animal that has enough stingers to hurt people as badly as the stings of a huge swarm of bees or wasps. The stings can cause fever, shock, and circulatory and respiratory problems.

Critique: The information about several different animals in this book is presented in a clear and engaging way. The pages are vibrant colors and the pictures opposite the text are actual photographs of the animals. There are many facts about animals in the book, for example there is one about cockroaches, “the largest cockroaches in the world are found in the tropics and can be more than three inches long and a half-inch wide” (p. 30). The information in the book is accurate and it disputes many myths about these animals nobody loves. Also, there are suggestions to what you should do if you encounter the animal.

Response: The cover of this book tells me that it’s going to be about animals nobody loves, specifically spiders because there is an image of one on the front of the book. I made a personal connection with this image after reading the text because I remember when my family and two other families went camping, I was very scared of Daddy Long Leg Spiders until one of the other moms told me that they can’t hurt a human because their mouths are so tiny. This was an animal that I had a previous bias about, but when leaning new facts about it, I had a whole new perspective, just like this book tries to do with several animals.

Assignment:

Vocabulary Lesson with the book Animals Nobody Loves:    

 The teacher displays a digital image of the spider from "Animals Nobody Loves" by Seymour Simon.

1.      Partners talk together about details they notice in the digital image and create a list of words they expect to see in the text that accompanies the picture.

2.       The text is presented and students read the selection, checking off words they predicted in step 2 as they appear in the text.

3.       Partners then add additional words to their list that they think are highly important to summarizing the content they have examined.

4.        Finally, summaries are created displaying listed words as bold face type to draw the attention of a reader.