Children's Book Review

I have been thinking about starting a new feature on this blog - reviews of children's books we use for our schooling. There are some amazing books out there for children, and we check out so many from the library. I haven't decided yet if I will stick with nature education books, or expand the reviews to include anything I want. I don't plan to do this on a fixed schedule; rather when we find something good to share. So here is my first offering:

Wind-Wild Dog by Barbara Joosse, illustrated by Kate Kiesler.

This book follows a husky pup as she is chosen by a man to join his dogsled team. The prose is tender toward the dog, yet really sets an atmosphere of wildness in the natural world. The first line of this book is "The night Ziva was born, the wind held its breath." There are many other poetic phrases throughout this book, which makes it a joy to read out loud, and satisfying to this literary-minded parent. There are lots of juicy verbs, such as smacked, lapped, slunk, pricked, and thrilled. I picked this book out when we were reading books about wolves, and found it an interesting companion to the more scientific wolf books.

The illustrations in this book are warm and exciting, and really bring out the relationship between the man and Ziva, the beauty and wildness of the Alaskan wilderness, and the personality of the dogs. Children could follow the threads introduced in the story to learn more about Alaska, sled-dog culture, wolves, or dogs. I highly recommend searching this book out at your local library. And please post a comment to let me know how you enjoyed this book. Happy reading!