Helen CowcherCritiques

From the tapirs roaming its cool floor to the Blue Morpho butterflies fluttering in its canopy, the rain forest is a peaceful place until man's machines endanger its existence and threaten its lush beauty.

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Books Included (10 total):
Rain Forest Animals Unfold and Learn
Monkeys and Apes – A first discovery book
The Living Rain Forest – Kratter
Baby Baboon – Hadithi
Animals of the Rain Forest – Savage
I wonder what a rainforest is – Donati
A walk in the rainforest – Pratt
Explore a Tropical Rainforest – Pop up book
The Sleepy Sloth – Murray
Slowly Slowly Slowly said the sloth – Eric Carle

A tigress wants to kill animals to feed her cubs. The people nearby need their domesticated animals for the survival of their families. SPOILER: After the tigress kills a bullock and then a camel, the local herdsmen discuss trying to poison her. The sanctuary ranger comes up with a plan to persuade the tigress not to wander beyond the forest sanctuary where she lives. His solution is reminiscent of Tootle, in which the little locomotive sees warning flags everywhere but the tracks where he belongs.
In simple words and simple, colorful illustrations that take up the entire page, a serious problem with a serious solution is presented to young children. I'm not sure what the age of the target audience is; there is, after all, death and that death has dire consequences for the owner of the animal.

In this book we follow a family of penguins who are trying to survive in the wilds of Antarctica. We face many different dangers, and learn how penguins perfect their own from the cold and other creatures.
This book seems fictional at first, but it has no fiction. All the struggles this family faces and decisions they make are true to the nature of penguins. They explain why the father, mother leave to get food, and why one stays back to protect their cub.

Desert Elephants is an informational text about the elephants in Mali, West Africa. The central message of this book is to tell the story and importance of the last remaining desert elephants. The elephants are sacred and important to nearby villages and the villages try their best to look out for the elephants and the migration they take every year.

This is an absolutely gorgeous book-- both in the language used and illustrations included. The author uses beautiful imagery to describe realistic actions of different people and animals at one sanctuary.
USE: This would be a perfect book to use to talk about descriptive language and imagery in writing. It would also be a good book to use to discuss multiple perspectives.

Powerful. I loved the illustrations - the attention to composition and line made them simple and strong, just like the text. No real narrative, the people have no names, not a wasted word. For children old enough to talk about complex issues - in India it's the tiger vs the herdsman, in Wyoming it's the wolf vs the rancher, etc. Not for little ones, especially if they're easily frightened.

This book does in interesting good at engaging readers from the beginning about the life of the animals that live in Antarctica. She immediately introduces the main animals that live there. She then transitions into each specific animals lifestyle there. Using many details she grasp her audience from an academic stand, while at the same time telling the information in a way children can relate to. The beautiful imagery gives children the imagination to actually visualize what Antarctica really looked like. However, not only was the author able to capture the good effectively, but the bad as well. For every positive their was a negative. For example when the author was talking about the penguins in the beginning, "Meanwhile, his mate is feeding at sea, where danger lurks." She concludes with the unknown mystery of whether all these animals will ever get along there. This book was very insightful, teaching a lot in a discrete way which is why the author set the story up this way.

I would use this book in a science class. It is about animals and their habitats in Antarctica. It also explains how humans and other creatures are a danger to them. Recommended for first-third grade.

This book has beautiful pictures, but it takes up an activist view that I would save until a child is older. It is simple. It tells the story of men destroying the rain forest, but not being able to finish.

Please see my entire review at http://nancycastaldonaturespeak.blogspot.com/2012/03/nonfiction-picture-book-cha...

This book was about penguins that lived in south, cold, Antarctica. In Antarctica, it is both night and day during the long winter season. When spring finally arrives, the penguins have to decide on a way to raise their young penguins. I like learning more about penguins after I read this book. This was a cute book to read, and the group of kids I read it to really enjoyed it, and asked questions about penguins and surviving out in the cold. I would use this book as a Science lesson over penguins, but it could also be used as a Social Studies lesson over the continent of Antarctica.

This simple cautionary tale about the plight of the Bengal Tiger makes understanding the situation from both sides very simple. I know where the goat herders are coming from and I understand the tigers hunting the goats. Also, I see how unhelpful simply chasing the tigers back onto the reserve is with their sense of smell leading their hunting instinct to the goats.

This simple book about the inhabitants of Antarctica and disruptive nature of the human interference is simple and well told. I enjoyed this book, though it left me wanting more at the end. A good addition to a section on Antarctica for primary and early intermediate readers.

Informative and inspiring story about the peaceful coexistence between elephants and local people. More human-animal relationships of this kind are needed in the world!

This book was purely a political statement to show how we are destroying the world. In the end the animals are safe, but it still isn't very good.

good story, good information at end of book.½

The book first takes you through the life cycle of a penguin, also showing you the dangers they face of keeping their young safe. But it also describes Adelie penguins who lose their babies, so can be sad for younger children. It then talks more about how humans are destroying the habitats that exist in the Antarctic.

A very touching story that is better for children 2-5 in my opinion. The text is very simple but I can see where my second graders might be thinking a bit when the birds eat the penguins eggs and when the helicopters make the penguins leave their nests altogether. But, we can't always shield our children from the problems they will continue to face as our Earth becomes more of a wasteland to certain habitats.

I really enjoyed the artwork in this book, with the bright, strong colors and dramatic brushstrokes. The cover completely grabs you, and the illustrator does a wonderful job of displaying how powerful and scary the tiger is to the village people and animals. At first I thought this was going to be a classic bad guy (tiger) good guy (human) tale, but it is much deeper than that. The ranger serves as the judge and wants to help both the tigers and the people.

A jaguar roams the rainforest minding his own buisness. A man sees the jaguar's footprints and fears for his heard. So, he goes in search of the jaguar hoping to find it and kill it, but when he spots it, he is in awe of his beauty and relaizes that this land is not just his. It belongs to many creatures. I liked the book because I think it is teaching a valuable lesson that people must respect animals and their life.

presents three animals of the continent in majestic close-up watercolors. We learn about the nesting habits of Emperor and Adelie penguins, begin to understand how human interaction impacts the birds, and see the impact of natural predators as well: the skua bird and leopard seal.

Preschool picture book about animals of the rain forest

Cowcher describes the life of Emperor Penguins, Adelie penguins, and Weddell seals in Antarctica. However the book is a little too complicated for the age group that it is intended for. Three year olds have difficulty distinguishing between the Weddell seals, who we are supposed to be sympathetic to, and the Leopard seal that almost eats one of the Emperor Penguins. The book ends with a helicopter scaring all the Adalie penguins away from their eggs, which are then eaten by Hua birds, Weddell seals being scared by explosions and ship hulls, and all the animals wondering whether the new arrivals (humans) will be able to share their environment or if they will destroy it. While I approve of the environmentalist message, Cowcher is trying to do too much with the book. If she had chosen only one antarctic species (I think she does the Emperor Penguins best) and gave more information on what the humans are doing there it would have been a stronger book and the children listening to it would be more likely to understand her message.

Rain Forest shows deforestation from the point of view of the jungle animals. The beautifully vibrant and saturated artwork shows the animals moving through the forest before, during and after buldozers come through for clearcutting. The powerful images and simple language make for quite an impact on the reader.