Harriet Brundle

I liked this book for many reasons. First, the use of textual features was very prominent in this story. The author utilized a table of contents, bolded vocabulary words, a glossary, and an index. Throughout the pages, the pictures enhanced the text in an elegant and organized way. Normally, nonfiction stories are covered with text, but this author presented the writing in a balanced way with the large and bright photographs.There was a page where symbols for Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism were displayed in a nice way which helped visual learners understand about various religious explored by people in the Middle Eastern region. After the author would ask questions as titles of pages, they would respond to the questions with new, bolded vocabulary which showed readers what was important in the text. An example includes “What is religion? Religion means to believe or worship something, usually a god or gods.” Bright photographs fill both pages when reading., however the author did not really label the images, rather she would describe new vocabulary or provide more detail about the subject. On a page that included an image of people praying on the ground in a mosque, the text next to the image says “There are no seats inside a mosque because people kneel to pray.” Different colored fonts and range in size are presented on the pages in a smooth and neat perspective. The text is very easy to follow and it is a well rounded story touching on various subjects including Mecca, Ramadan and Eid, facts about Islam, The Qur’an, Allah and Muhammad, places of worship, and the Hajj. The information is authentic, accurate, and current. A page stated “Islam is a religion that began over 1,000 years ago and is the second largest religion in the world.” Another section of the book stated true facts about the religion including “Muslims believe a man named Muhammad was chosen to hear Allah’s words.” I believe the depth of this book is age appropriate for readers. The main idea was to inform and educate others about the important aspects surrounding the faith of Islam.… (mer)

I liked this book for a few different reasons. First, the book used great illustrations of all kinds of fruits, some that I had never even seen to draw in children. Some of the fruits were from different parts of the world and looked like they'd be fun to look at, let alone eat! Second, the book used great language for younger kids to be able to read. The book even had fun facts about fruit across some of the pages, where students learn facts (as well as I did). For example, a banana is in the berry family, but a strawberry is not! The overall message of the story is to get kids interested in eating fruits to become healthy adults.… (mer)