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Reviewed by: Taylor Coonelly, Elementary School Librarian Title: Mysterious, Marvelous Octopus Author: Paige Towler Publisher: National Geographic
Year: 2024 Good for Grades: PreK-4 Genre/Type of Book: Nonfiction
Content Warnings, or things that other School Librarians should be aware of: N/a Recommended for a school library: Yes Reason(s) for choosing the book: Nominated for the CYBILS Elementary/Middle Grade Nonfiction If you were tasked by the publisher with writing a short quote for the back cover of this book, what would it be: Eye-catching photographs and a simple rhyme scheme dazzle the reader with a fearsome undersea creature. |
Review:
Eye-catching photographs and a simple rhyme scheme dazzle the reader with a fearsome undersea creature.
Mysterious, Marvelous Octopus is an ode to one of the smartest creatures on planet Earth, and includes many high definition pictures and facts about octopi. This text also includes an 'Octopus Gallery" featuring images of different types of octopus, and a foreword written by Sy Montgomery that gives a brief overview of the creature and some fun facts.
The photograph illustrations are what captured me in this book - while it does also have great factual information on octopi. The photos are high quality, and really allow the reader to take a close look at an often elusive ocean creature, and connect to the facts written on the page. The text also differs in size, shape and color, giving visual interest and drawing the reader's eye to important vocabulary words. I think that this is an incredible nonfiction book for an elementary audiences, and that students would be interested to pick up this book if set upon the shelf. I could also see a variety of different ways in which this text could be used in curriculum- a lesson on nonfiction books, text features, a source for a research project, and more.
I think that you could also do fun activities with the text, like having students do a text feature hunt, creating a graphic novel or picture book about octopi with the information from this book, and more.
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