Charles MicucciCritiques

excellent

Examines the history and statistics of peanuts, their
agriculture and influence.

This would be a good book for older primary students and intermediate students. The book contains tons of information about honey bees, from their stages of life, to their roles in the hive, and the different types of honey bees. The book contains realistic and cartoon images for honeybees and gives very informative descriptions of the different topics surrounding honeybees. This book is helpful because of how much you can learn about honeybees while reading it. I would use this book in a read aloud when we are doing a unit on insects, because there are wonderful explanations and images found within its pages.

This book is a simple, but fun way to talk about the history of corn. There are lots of fun facts about corn embedded into the story line. They even talk about pink corn!

This book went through the life cycle of bees as well as their jobs as different types of bees. I really liked the book because of the illustrations. Most of the illustrations were lifelike and scientifically drawn, but there were also cartoon bees off to the sides saying cute things that made the book more interesting.

This picture book explains how the crop of corn came to the U.S. and all about corn. What we can make of it, how it grows, etc.

Lately, it has become known that bee populations are decreasing more and more. Bees are such a crucial part of our environment and how we live day to day because of the service they provide: pollination. Pollination allows our fruit and vegetables to grow. This book discusses that and much more. It discusses the parts of the bees, the roles of the bees, the structure of the nest, and the job of a bee keeper. It gives one an insider perspective on the ins and outs of a honeybee. I could see myself using this book to discuss bees and flowers to both upper grades and lower grades. The great benefit of this book is it has a lot of pictures to even provide context for the ELL students.

This is a book all about ants. The information is divided into several sections, and within those sections there are illustrations that go with a specific paragraph.
This is a good informational book because there is a wide variety of information available. This is a good early chapter book because it is 30 pages totally and clearly split into informational sections.
Media: ink and wash
Age Range: Upper elementary

This is a good example of an informational book because all the information is true. It explains what role corn has played in history, and how it has spread over the earth. I like it because of all the diagrams and timelines that kids can understand. Media is Acrylic

Cute and informative. Alas, ants are not quite as interesting as bees, so this book is not quite as fun as the book on bees by the same author.½

I was pretty disturbed by how "pro corn industry" this book is. The author's point of view was decidedly one-sided. While it does a decent job of emphasizing its Native American history and illustrating the 'anatomy' of corn, it completely ignores the environmental and political implications. The books says "every fifty pounds of dent corn: that cow eats, it gains five pounds; makes enough sweetener for about 350 glasses of soda; produces two and one-fourth gallons of ethanol, enabling a car to travel from Baltimore to Washington, D.C."

But it says nothing whatsoever about the environmental impacts of so much land use dedicated to corn used for cattle, nor that this kind of feed is not natural for cattle and causes health problems, nor that the U.S. government subsidizes these crops to feed America's gluttonous over-consumption of red meat in the first place. Likewise, how could the fact that it sweetens 350 glasses of soda be a good thing when we already have the highest rates of diabetes and obesity around the world?Furthermore, scientific studies have shown that corn ethanol is NOT the most efficient biofuel; biofuels made from algae, for one, are far more efficient but progress with other biofuels has been stunted specifically because of the agriculture industry's continued lobbying for corn subsidies.

Additionally, the book presents corn in its multitude of uses and attempts to show how many varieties of corn exist, but talks nothing of how the genetic variation of corn has actually significantly dwindled and some strains are now genetically extinct due to large-scale monoculture farming techniques and genetically modified crops used by companies like Monsanto.

The illustrations in the book were beautiful but regretfully mask the reality of the corn industry. I also found the endorsements of this book by the NYT Book Review and Kirkus Reviews to be deeply disturbing in their wholesale acceptance of the "greatness" of corn. If I were teaching this book I would have my students read it first, then watch "King Corn" and "Fast Food Nation" and then read the book a second time and compare/contrast the presentation of info in all three.

Cheerfully illustrated. The text has a breezy, informal tone, which makes it very accessible. My only quibble--wish the author had touched on the problem of corn monoculture and the environmental problems of the heavy pesticide use needed to support it.

Summary: All the things you would ever want to know about ants are laid out with intriguing illustrations in this wonderful book, Some of the chapters are: Inside an Ant Hill, Kinds of Ants, The Ant’s Body and even how ants evolved.

Personal Reaction: I actually enjoyed this book and learned a lot also!

Classroom Extension: I would have the children draw a picture of themselves as ants.

This is an interesting book that goes in depth about anything and everything corn. It goes through the history of corn, how and what people use to use it for other than food. This book goes through the different types of corn, and the many different colors of corn. It tells you the different parts of the corn plant, along with how and when you grow it. Corn is used in many things that people have no idea corn is even present. Also they have corn celebrations, festivals, and mazes that many people like to participate in around the U.S.

I absolutely love that much of the information in this book is squeezed into the illustrations--it makes the book much more interactive and fun! I feel like even I learned so much about ant life just from this small book. It contains everything from different species of ants to the different jobs they carry out and even what they do during depending on what month it is.½

Everything you've ever wanted to know about apples and more!

This book informs us on the facts about the life cycle, work, and history of the honeybee, one of the world's most useful insects. I liked learning the different roles of the queen, worker and drone. The illustrations are detailed and they really help the reader understand what they are learning about. In this book you can discover what a beekeeper does, how bees make honey and what people make from beeswax (lipstick, shoe polish, candles, ets.). I feel this book is very informative and interesting to read.

The illustrations are intriguing and of actual drawings of ants as the author portrays everything someone could possibly want to know about ants. Very informational.

This book is exactly what the title says it is. It is about the life and times of the peanut. It tells you about where it came from, how it is used, where it is grown, who grows it, and more. Along with a general description of what is being talked about on a certain page, the book also goes into detail about a certain topic on each page. If you want to know about the peanut and its history, this is a great book.

As a student I liked the amount of information that was given in this book. It presented it very well and used the illustrations perfectly with the text. The pictures were actually very helpful. There were some words that I didn’t know and the pictures helped me understand what they were talking about.

As a teacher this book would be great to use with a student who is interested in the history of the peanut and/or what it is used for. Also if the student is interested in who invented more than 300 uses for it or who uses them the most. A very good non-fiction book.