Reading Level: Grade 1 Interest Level: Grades K – 3
Foxes stroll through backyards and gardens in cities. In this low-level title, beginning readers can learn about how these clever critters thrive in urban areas. Features call out common species, the foods foxes enjoy, and the places they live. Leveled text, photo labels, and a picture glossary offer additional support. These sly creatures are sure to excite emerging readers!
In this series, the reader learns about specific animals in each book that exist within cities. Each book begins with describing the physical traits of the animal and the types of food the animal eats in the city. The books describe the life of the specific animal in a city habitat, including places the animal lives and where the animal gets food. Each book shows that the animals living in the cities are appreciated by some people and are considered a nuisance by other people. As a teacher, these books are a dream for students doing research projects because the books are all aligned in the same format. Therefore, a teacher can work on non-fiction text features with students and use different books from the same series. This makes research projects more cohesive and easier to navigate for the young researchers. These non-fiction books include numerous non-fiction text features to support the reader in understanding the important facts in the book. Some non-fiction text features included in each book are engaging photographs, a table of contents, labels, headings, bold-faced words, a picture glossary, and an index. The real photographs of the animals are engaging to readers of all ages. Make sure you check out these books to learn more about city critters that may live by you!', Charity Nadrozny, 2nd Grade Teacher, Illinois, Educator Review,'The City Critters series (6 titles) surveys common urban wildlife, and young readers will easily recognize this volume’s featured animal. Yes, the handsome (or disgusting, depending on where your loyalties lie) rock pigeon struts, snacks, and poops its way through the city in this breezy overview. The text is tailored to independent readers still developing their literacy skills, with support baked into the large print size, predictable sentence structure, and repetition of vocabulary terms, in both the main text and the labels for the illustrations. A full-page photo appears on every spread, often with smaller inset pictures reinforcing a fact from the text. Pigeon anatomy, diet, behavior, preferred perches, and reproduction basics get swift coverage. Kids may not learn many new facts, but the familiar subject will make the act of reading nonfiction less daunting. — Julia Smith
These vibrant covered non-fiction animal books for early readers will be in high demand at the elementary library. These titles are six of ten in the Bellwether Blastoff! Readers Level One: City Critters Series. While these books are grade one level, many will enjoy the beautiful photography and clear writing contained within. They all have a Table of Contents and Chapters that are consistently the same in each of the books and thus, are helpful for emerging readers when reading many in the series. There are minimal words on each page. Some words are in bold. These are in a Glossary in the back of the book with helpful definitions. The end of the book also has basic facts, other book recommendations to read and learn more, an index, and web information on how to get more information at a simple reading level. Many will know these animals as they are common in many communities but these books give clear information on species and genus, where they choose to have their home and types of food they eat. I would highly recommend these books for any library that provides informational books for primary leveled readers.
