Sideways Stories from Wayside School

This entertaining book was written by Louis Sachar and illustrated by Adam McCauley.  It is about a school called Wayside School that was accidently built sideways.  Instead of being one story with 30 classrooms it was built with 30 stories, one classroom on each story.  The builder of the school not only made the mistake of building the school wrong, but he also forgot to add a 19th floor so the building skips from story 18 to 20!!  Throughout the book, each chapter focuses on a different teacher, student, or staff member from Wayside School and they all happen to be very strange people!  I think this book is hilarious because it just continues to get weirder and weirder as the chapters go on.  As the reader I became so interested in the book because I could not even imagine what weird things would happen next.  I KNOW that all children will love this silly book and enjoy it as much as did.  I feel that it is a perfect book to bring into the classroom to serve the sole purpose of pure enjoyment for the children and teacher.  : )

Mister Seahorse

Mister Seahorse is an excellent nonfiction picture book by Eric Carle. I am really glad that I came across this book because it is educationally informative for nearly any age child, it even taught me some things that I did not know.
Mister Seahorse is about the several fish families in which the eggs are cared for by the father instead of the mother, like ordinary births. Some of the fish families include Seahorse, Tilapia, and Pipe fish. Each of the males from the different fish families care for the eggs in different ways, some include making nests or carrying the eggs in their mouths.
The illustrations in this book are great. Children can read and learn about the various types of fish families that are cared for by the male, and then connect the illustrations with the reading to get a good visual understanding of the appearance of the diverse fish and the way that the eggs are cared for.
This book could be used when learning about animals and reproductive systems. It could also be used to introduce new words of things found in sea water such as coral reef, seaweed, and reeds.