Cool Summer Tail, A

When summer heats up, animals find ways to stay cool. In A Cool Summer Tail animals wonder how humans stay cool too. Do they dig under the dirt, grow special summer hair, or only come out at night? This sequel to the popular A Warm Winter Tail features many of same animals but this time, with their summer adaptations, offering an important "compare and contrast" opportunity.

This informational fictional story with rhyming text includes a 4-page For Creative Minds section in the back of the book and a 59-page cross-curricular Teaching Activity Guide online. A Cool Summer Tail is vetted by experts and designed to encourage parental engagement. Its extensive back matter helps teachers with time-saving lesson ideas, provides extensions for science, math, and social studies units, and uses inquiry-based learning to help build critical thinking skills in young readers. The Spanish translation supports ELL and dual-language programs. The interactive ebook reads aloud in both English and Spanish with word highlighting and audio speed control to promote oral language skills, fluency, pronunciation, text engagement, and reading comprehension. Tap animals and other things that make noise to hear their sounds.

Written by Carrie A Pearson, Illustrated by Christina Wald
32 pg, 10 x 8.5, Ages 4-8, Grades PK-3, Lexile: 700, AR: 3.4, F&P: N

Reviews:

In a rhyming text, Summer Tail takes a more lighthearted look at what animals do to keep cool in the summer. Each animal baby asks its mother if humans do whatever that animal does to stay cool. - School Library Journal

...Budding naturalists will come away with a sense of the variety of ways wild animals living in temperate climates stay cool. - Kirkus Reviews

In this story, readers can compare themselves to animals and their methods of staying cool in the summer. Students will learn about painted turtles swimming in ponds, black-capped chickadees perching in the shade, and wood frogs digging in the dirt. - Library Media Connection

Author/Illustrator Info:

Carrie A. Pearson is a former early elementary teacher and the winner of a SCBWI-Michigan Picture Book Mentorship Award and a Work of Outstanding Promise grant. A Cool Summer Tail, and the companion, A Warm Winter Tail (2013-2014 Great Lakes Great Books Literature Program and a Gelett Burgess Award) follow many of the same animals to describe how they manage the hot summer and cold winter weather. Carrie and her family live in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Visit her website at carriepearsonbooks.com.

In addition to Cash Kat, Christina Wald has illustrated Fibonacci Zoo, A Cool Summer Tail, A Warm Winter Tail, Habitat Spy, Little Red Bat, and Henry the Impatient Heron for Arbordale. She also enjoys illustrating a wide variety of toys, games, books, and magazines. From a book that featured hundreds of animals on each page (Look, Find, and Learn: Animals of the World) to games including the Star Wars role playing game series, every assignment covers something new and exciting. In recent years, she has illustrated tons of different animals for books and other publications. Christina enjoys the research aspect of such projects, saying that each new book is a fascinating new learning experience. She often integrates travel to research for her illustrations. She lives in Ohio with her husband and three cats. Visit Christina's website.