Monday, August 24, 2009

Nonfiction Monday -- Panda Kindergarten

Panda Kindergarten by Joanne Ryder, photographs by Dr. Katherine Feng. Collins, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2009. Available now.

Awwwww.
Pandas are so cute -- until you discover how large they are. So, what could be cuter than a whole kindergarten of baby Giant Pandas? I counted at least nine in one picture, and sixteen in another. Playing and growing up together should help them learn panda social skills that will be useful when they are released in the wild.

Joanne Ryder's lyrical, easy reading words are the perfect accompaniment to these luscious photographs. I especially like the faint imprints of Chinese flower and leaf designs in the blank areas of the pages. Very unintrusive -- you'll hardly notice them -- yet they give a very Chinese flavor to the book.

These photographs of baby pandas playing through their day were taken at the Wolong Nature Reserve, the largest unit of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda.

A good book for a preschool or early elementary introduction to the Giant Panda. If you must have facts about Pandas for a report, there are a few at the end of the book.

Other Nonfiction Monday posts are on Anastasia Suen's Picture Book of the Day Blog.
-wendieOld

2 comments:

laurasalas said...

This looks totally adorable! Putting it on reserve at my library right now. Thanks, Wendie!

laurasalas said...

P.S. My lib system has 19 copies, almost all of them checked out. Clearly this has a lot of kid appeal!