Endangered Elephants

by Bobbie Kalman

Endangered Elephants is an easy-to-understand and easy-to-follow informational book about the incredible elephant.

Book Talk

Kalman puts together a wonderful non-fiction book about endangered elephants that is well paced and well sequenced with relevant information about the elephant. The book presents information that is simplistic, yet interesting to kids.  

Endangered Elephants contains typical features of an informational book, making it easy for student readers to follow and an excellent mentor text for informational writing.  There are topic headings in bolded,  large font at the top of the left hand page (Elephant Bodies) and the topic is explored in the open  two pages spread.  Subtopics on the page spread are introduced by  a smaller, bolded font (The amazing trunk). Photos, drawings and diagrams on the page layout balance out the text.  All photos, drawings and diagrams have their own captions written in italics to add additional information to the topic on the page.  Topic-specific and/or scientific words are bolded, explained when they appear in the text and can also be found in the glossary in the back.

With each turn of the page, a new topic is explored making it very student-reader friendly.

Endangered Elephants includes a table of contents, a glossary, an index and a “Learn More!” page (with websites to visit along with encouragement to visit the local library!).

An example of the text: 

Pages 6-7 feature the topic What are Elephants?.

After the explanation that elephants are mammals and what exactly mammals are, there is the subheading called “Like no other”. This is the accompanying text for that subheading:

“Elephants belong to the Elephantidae family.  They are the only type of animal in this family. Elephants are huge animals that have big ears, long trunks, and tusks. Tusks are long pointed teeth.”

I plan to look for other books in this “Earth’s Endangered Animals” series.

Suggested Uses as a Mentor Text: 

Book Genre: Informational

Reading Workshop strategies: Search for and Use Information, Question, Summarize

Writing Workshop:  Informational Writing

Grammar: Sentence fluency

Curricular Themes:  Science, Animal Adaptations 

About Bobbie Kalman:    http://www.bobbiekalmanrefugeechild.com/bio_and_message/