Beach month ~ Let's go Fishing!

This is it – our last day at the beach. So I tucked two books in my tote: one about a fish, and one about the oceans that cover our planet. Have fun, and brush the sand off your feet before you come back inside.

Themes: ocean, fish, nature

Anglerfish: The Seadevil of the Deep 

by Elaine M. Alexander; illustrated by Fiona Fogg 

32 pages; ages 4-8

‎Candlewick, 2022

Far, far below the ocean’s surface, where no trace of sunlight can reach, Anglerfish makes her home.

Anglerfish may look scary, with that big mouth and sharp teeth. But she wasn’t always so big, or so toothy. Readers follow anglerfish from fry to fierce predator to releasing eggs for the next generation.

What I like about this book: I love how the dark, scary cover and the dark, mysterious illustrations bring us right into anglerfish’s deep, dark world. I really LOVE the illustration of crab trapped behind those sharp, sharp teeth. And I like how the back matter shows the ocean zones and adaptations of deep ocean fish. I also like the comparison of the different species of angler fish. I didn’t know there were so many!

Oceans : Shine-a-Light 

by Carron Brown; illus. by Becky Thorns 

36 pages; ages 4-8

‎ Kane Miller, 2022

Five great oceans ebb and flow over our planet…

When you look beneath the waves, you discover the oceans are filled with wildlife. Sometimes you have to look beneath the ice, sometimes amongst the kelp forests, and sometimes deep, down at the bottom of the dark, cold Atlantic. 

What I like about this book: Each page presents a mystery … who is hiding here? To solve the mystery, shine a flashlight behind the page or hold it up to the light to reveal what is hidden. It could be a narwal, a seal, or a turtle. It might even be a sea dragon! A map at the back shows a map of the world’s oceans and tells a bit more about them.

Beyond the Books:

Reel in a catch of books about fish and ocean stuff…. Here’s a few titles you might enjoy: Just Like Us! Fish, I See Sea Food, and Ocean Soup: A Recipe for You, Me, and a Cleaner Sea (links are to reviews)

Learn more about deep-sea anglerfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. 

Make a mini-ocean in a bottle. All you need are sand, shells, some small plastic ocean animals, and water. Oh, and a plastic bottle for the aquarium. Instructions here. You can find a whole bunch more ocean activities here.

We’ll join Perfect Picture Book Friday once they resume. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copies provided by the publishers.

Be a Scientist ~ International Monarch Monitoring Blitz, July 29 - August 7

Got an eye for monarchs? The Xerces Society among other partners invites you to join a weeklong International Monarch Monitoring Blitz beginning this Friday, July 29. 

Volunteers help track milkweed, monarch eggs, caterpillars, and/or adults as part of a trinational effort to better understand the monarch butterfly’s breeding productivity, range, and timing in North America. 

Learn how you can participate in this community science project. Give yourself some extra time to watch training videos and read up on the projects. Then head out and do science!

http://www.cec.org/international-monarch-monitoring-blitz/

Where Does a Walk Around the Block Take You?

One of the things I like about my daily walks is that there’s always something to see. Sometimes it’s flies clustered around just-opened willow flowers. Sometimes it’s the way a Virginia creeper spirals up the trunk of a tree. After a wind storm it might be treasures blown down from the treetops: twigs with interesting lichens, bird nests, seeds with helicopter rotors attached…

Recently I’ve been reading the stories Spike Carlsen tells in his book, Walk Around the Block (HarperCollins, 2020). He’s an urban walker, in Minnesota. So he writes about snow. He also writes about manhole covers, recycling bins, bike lanes, crosswalks, and how water gets to his house – and where it goes after it slurks down the drain.

Carlsen asks questions: what happened to the front porch? It used to be the place where neighbors would pull up a rocking chair or milk crate and chit chat. He takes readers on tours through a power plant, a sewer, a trash museum, even the inner-workings of a post office. How does the mail get from there to here? He opens our eyes to appreciate the natural side of things as well… things like pigeons, squirrels – even roadkill.

This is the sort of book that makes you want to walk slow enough that you can inspect the weeds pushing between the cracks in the sidewalk. This is the sort of book that inspires you to head outside before the sun dries the dew so you can look at spiderwebs on the fence. 

This is the sort of book that makes you wonder: if I walk around the block today, what will I find? And leads one to ask: does it matter how I walk around the block? If I go in a counter-clockwise direction, will I see things differently? What if I play hopscotch with the fallen walnuts and hickory nuts? Walk at a snail’s pace? 

A Dozen Walks to take Around Your Block

1. Walk sideways, like a crab
2. Walk with a child
3. Skip part of the way
4. Walk backward (when you’re in a safe place)
5. Look at all the flowers on your route
6. Listen to the birds
7. Notice people working ~ what are they doing?
8. Walk at first light
9. Walk after dark
10. Look at doorways
11. Examine things growing in the sidewalk
12. Stop and smell the _______.