Jupiter

Title: Jupiter
Author: Larry Dane Brimner
Genre: nonfiction

Summary

Jupiter is a nonfiction book that describes the planet Jupiter in an easy, understandable, and fun way. Children would enjoy this book because it is interesting and they would learn a lot because the context is presented in a simple way. The book is broken down into smaller sections that are labled with subtitles. These subtitles include The Giant Planet, The Fifth Planet, Jupiter's Clouds, Jupiter's Neighbors, Exploring Jupiter, and Impact with a Comet. The reason I liked this book so much and believe children would too is because it presents the information on one page and then follows it up with a photograph on the next page. This is helpful because it presents the information in more than one way to the children, which will make it easier for the children to remember the facts. At the end of the book it gives "quick facts" about Jupiter as well as all the Missions that has been taken to Jupiter. This book provides a good amount of information about Jupiter in a simple way that would get students interested in learning about Jupiter, however, it would make them want to go look up more detailed information in other books written about Jupiter.

Classroom Connection
Nonfiction books are very beneficial to students' learning. It helps students understand what has already been discovered about the world and what is left to be discovered. The book Jupiter would be good to use when students are learning about space. Students could be broken up into groups of four students or so and each group could research a specific planet and then present it to their peers. It would be fun to have them create a model of their specific planet and then put all the planets together in the correct order and create "space" in the classroom. This would give students a visual and would help them remember specific information about each planet.