Chirping Crickets

by Melvin Berger, Megan Lloyd (Illustrator)

Overview

Read and find out about crickets in this colorfully illustrated nonfiction picture book.

Chirrrp, chirrrp, chirrrp—thats the sound of crickets on a summer evening. A male cricket makes this sound by rubbing his legs against a bumpy vein on his wing. Find out more about crickets, including how they hear with their knees, in Melvin Berger and Megan Lloyd's stunningly illustrated introduction to the cricket.

This is a clear and appealing science book for early elementary age kids, both at home and in the classroom. It's a Level 2 Let's-Read-and-Find-Out, which means the book explores more challenging concepts for children in the primary grades. The 100+ titles in this leading nonfiction series are:

• hands-on and visual
• acclaimed and trusted
• great for classrooms

Top 10 reasons to love LRFOs:

• Entertain and educate at the same time
• Have appealing, child-centered topics
• Developmentally appropriate for emerging readers
• Focused; answering questions instead of using survey approach
• Employ engaging picture book quality illustrations
• Use simple charts and graphics to improve visual literacy skills
• Feature hands-on activities to engage young scientists
• Meet national science education standards
• Written/illustrated by award-winning authors/illustrators & vetted by an expert in the field
• Over 130 titles in print, meeting a wide range of kids' scientific interests

Books in this series support the Common Core Learning Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, and the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) standards. Let's-Read-and-Find-Out is the winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Films Prize for Outstanding Science Series.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780064451802
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/01/1998
Series:	Let's Read and Find Out Science Series: Level 2
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	168,544
Product dimensions:	9.81(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.07(d)
Lexile:	590L (what's this?)
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Melvin Berger is the author of many classic LRFOs, including Germs Make Me Sick!, Oil Spills! and Why I Cough, Sneeze, Shiver, Hiccup, and Yawn, as well as other nonfiction on the Harper backlist. He lives in East Hampton, NY.

Megan Lloyd has illustrated more than forty books for children, including The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams, Thanksgiving at the Tappletons' by Eileen Spinelli, and The Mixed-Up Rooster by Pamela Duncan Edwards. She lives with her husband on a farm in Pennsylvania, where she raises sheep, chickens, and cows. Some of the rabbits from her vegetable garden have even been kind enough to allow Ms. Lloyd to sketch them as models for this book.

Editorial Reviews

K-Gr 2--A general introduction to the physical characteristics, life cycle, and behavior of this insect. The text is clear and simple but the sentences are occasionally choppy. The full-page, rainbow-hued watercolors are accurately rendered and do a good job of representing the text. Readers' curiosity is sure to be piqued by the inclusion of interesting facts (a cricket's chirping can be used to determine the temperature outside). A final section offers suggestions for making a model, jumping like a cricket, and playing a "Do You Know?" game. An attractive title that will enhance nature collections.--Michele Snyder, Chappaqua Public Library, NY

School Library Journal

To human listeners, cricket songs announce that summer can't last forever; their evening chirps forecast falling leaves, cooler temperatures, and the start of school in the not-so-distant future. But for crickets, chirping is the mating song of male crickets, rubbing their front wings together, which females "hear" through membranes on their knees. These familiar insects seem a natural subject for the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series; Berger (How Life Began, 1991, etc.) describes their life cycles and their basic anatomy in an accessible, lively way. Lloyd's pictures are large and colorful; captions point out the knee ears and the sound-producing parts of the wings. Easy projects are included, as is a tidy formula for figuring out the temperature from the number of cricket chirps per minute. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-9)

Kirkus Reviews