To the Zoo Animal Poems

Summary:
The book shows when young children go to the zoo for the first time they are amazed at the animals. This is a collection of poems about animal traits and characteristics as a child visiting the zoo would see them. A poem about a giraffe shows how a child could plan to build very tall buildings for the giraffe. At the end of the book it has a poem that has a child wondering what the elephant does when there are no visitors to be amazed at him.

Reaction:
I enjoyed reading this book, I thought the poems in the book were very good and showed what zoo animals do when they have visitors. The setting of the story was at the St. Louis Zoo. The characters of the story where the children that visited the animals in the zoo. It reminded me of when I went to the Oklahoma City Zoo on a field trip in elementary school.

Extension Ideas:
1.This book could be used as an introduction on a unit on zoo animals.
2.This boo could show kids various animals that they might see on a field
trip to the zoo.
3.This book could introduce children to simple poems.

This book is a collection of animal poems by several different authors. This is a very captivating collection of poems, written with extremely well imagination. With almost every zoo animal included, the authors do such a good job of describing each animal as portrayed by a child. In fact, they describe each animal in a way that you will feel like you have just visited the real zoo.


I really enjoyed this book because I love poetry. To me, the book uses three forms of poetry; it uses narrative (not heavy narrative), lyric, and free verse. Not all of the poems had the rhythmic feel, but most did, and it was still a fun, enthusiastically creative set of poems. The illustrations in this book are of course, outstanding, especially portraying the zoo animals in such great detail. The illustrations flow very well with this book, as each animal is described; the pictures work in showing what is being said. The illustrations in the book look like paintings; they too are very nicely done and creative.

I would have the students in my class pick one of their favorite zoo animals to write a short poem about, describing the animal or what they think the animal is thinking, they would also draw the animal to show how it looks and how it fits with what they wrote. I think another fun activity would be taking my class outside to sit, listen, and watch for different kinds of noises and things that go on outside on a busy day. I would have a pencil and paper and have each student tell me something they hear, for example, truck engines roaring, or birds softly chirping, or seeing a squirrel run across the street. While they tell me what they observe, we could then discuss how to put all of it together to make our very own “Our Outdoor Classroom” poem.