Read and Wonder

Early in my days as the teacher librarian of students between 4 and 8 years old I discovered  a series of books from Walker Books called Read and Wonder.  No other books in the non-fiction section of the library were like these! They were not like the traditional non-fiction books with photographs, contents pages, an index, headings and subheadings. They looked like story books because they had illustrations. They were written and illustrated by well known authors and illustrators. There were books by Vivian French, Martin Jenkins, Nicola Davies, Dick King Smith, Charlotte Voake and Karen Wallace to name but a few. I could 'sell' them to boys because they were information books and I could 'sell' them to girls because they looked like storybooks.

At a conference I picked up a great poster that was thin but very wide and it had the covers of the books on it. It was the perfectly to display and 'sell' the books to the students and their parents when they came into the library to borrow books. The poster has long since worn thin and become tatty, but Walker has kept adding to this wonderful series of books. Along the way there has been a name change to Nature Storybooks  and they have included authors and illustrators from Australia, New Zealand and the USA.

This term while my library is 'drowning' in curious creatures and my students are exploring all sorts of animals that they want to know more about, these books have once again 'walked out of the library'. A student who had just read Nick Dowson's Tigress  came to chat with me about the book and wanted another book 'just like that!' I love it when my job is 'this easy'.

If you don't know just how many of these wonderful books there are I have put the one that are to do with animals on this Pinterest page. Illustrated here is an animal from each of the five vertebrate groups!