Green Seeing Green All Around Us

Green Seeing Green All Around Us is created by the A+ book team for Capstone Publishing and a part of a series. In the series you will find titles for Black, Blue, Brown, Orange, Pink, Purple, Red, White, and Yellow. I became interested in the White book when my friend Katie was blogging about it and used it during a lesson I watched back in the spring. I just got the entire series today. I thought they would be fun for us to use this summer at home and then open our minds in the classroom when the year starts.

Green is my favorite color so this book is right up my alley. The text is printed in shades of green. Nonfiction features you will discover right away are a Table of Contents, an Index, Words to Know, Read More, and Internet Sites. Each two page spread is set against a simple background with a large single item photograph of a common green object. Let me share my favorite food found in this book. The photograph is a larger than life size mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. The text says..."Green is fresh. Green is cool." You will also find a text box with a nonfiction fact related to the color and/or the object. "Other names for green are mint and forest. Green ice cream tastes fresh and minty." Each book ends with a color activity to try where colors are mixed but different medias are used each time.

I think there are many possibilities for this series. The text is simple and relevant to the illustrations making them a great read aloud, shared reading, and independent read for many students. These books can help open our own observations about colors. Where we see color, what color can be and do. I can see students writing their own version for their favorite colors, using these as mentor texts. These books might even be a springboard for poetry. The activities at the end are simple, hands on, and an accessible procedural text for your classroom to try. My students come to school knowing their colors, I think this series will extend our thinking and observations, making us more aware of the world around us.