Skip to main content

Book Review: A Rainbow of Birds

Category: Academic Wings
Author: Janet Halfmann www.janethalfmann.com
Artist: Jack Foster jacktoon.blogspot.com
Print ISBN: 9781616334628; 1616334622
eBook ISBN: 9781616334635; 1616334630

Birds have their legends just like people do, and baby birds love to hear the stories. Papa Cardinal, whose job it is to pass down bird ways to his chicks, tells them the story of how birds gave the world the rainbow. It’s a tale of fun and squabbles and magic!

Thoughts: I'm lucky to know both the author and illustrator of this cute picture book. Both Halfmann and Foster have sent me work when Stories for Children Magazine was publishing issues every month. I always enjoyed their creative minds and the work they did. Now to see them working together to create this book...it only makes the perfect match of creative minds.

I really enjoyed reading this book with my two girls. My oldest already knew the colors of the rainbow and how they form, but she really liked the idea of this myth. My youngest is just learning the rainbow colors and really like the myth behind how rainbows came to be. It was fun talking with them both about rainbows and doing the activities found at the back of the book. A very nice addition for teachers and homeschoolers.

The only thing that popped out at me about this book is Halfmann uses the age old ROY-G-BIV to teach the colors of the rainbow. I learned this as well in school, however, in the past few years since my oldest (Dominic) they have dropped Indigo from the rainbow list of colors. None the less, this is still a cute picture book and one entertains and teaches young minds about the world around them.

About the Author:
Janet Halfmann (http://www.janethalfmann.com) is an award-winning children's author who strives to make her books come alive for young readers and listeners. Many of her picture books are about animals and nature. She also writes picture book biographies about little-known people of achievement.

Recent titles by Janet include A Rainbow of Birds; Eggs 1, 2,3: Who Will the Babies Be?; Home in the Cave; Star of the Sea: A Day in the Life of a Starfish; Good Night, Little Sea Otter; and Seven Miles to Freedom: The Robert Smalls Story. Janet has written thirty-five fiction and nonfiction books for children.

Here are links to the book’s pages and the publisher's websites:

Comments

  1. Thanks so much for the lovely review. I'm so happy your children like the birds' original legend about how the rainbow came to be.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for visiting my blog and for leaving a comment.

Popular posts from this blog

The Time to Start Writing is Now! (1st published on Utah Children's Writers)

I teach writing for my local college's continuing educational program. I love meeting with beginning writers each week and sharing the basics. However, I'm always surprised to find many of them haven't even sat down to write the story building inside them or at least log the ideas they have for story lines. So my advice to you today if you want to start down the road of becoming a writer...The Time to Start Writing is Now! Some Idea Starters For beginning writers (and something I learned when I studied at the Institute of Children's Literature), I have found using visual aids to spark an idea is always a great way to begin the process of writing. You can do this to draft an actually short story or book for submission to just using it as a writing exercise.  Study the pictures I have below or pick one of your own from a magazine, old photo album, etc. Study the pictures and select one that appeals to you most.  Also, keep in mind your target readership with pi...

The Multiplied Benefits of Journaling

Do you keep or have you kept a journal or diary? If so, you probably already know some of the benefits of journaling because you've experienced them. You know that your journal helps you make sense of the senseless side of your life. A journal can be an emotional lifesaver when you go through a hard time. But did you know that scientists believe journaling can even keep you physically healthy? The release of pent-up emotions you pour into your journal every day actually helps reduce the symptoms of arthritis and asthma, and strengthens your immune system. This really makes sense if you consider that much illness is exacerbated by stress, and a journal is one of the best stress reducers out there. Journaling gives you a record of your emotional growth like no other. While it can be useful at times to be able to look back and see just when your neighbor moved in or when you started suffering from headaches, the intangible changes in you can be even more fascinating to look back...

Is Research Really Important in Fiction Writing?

In a lot of the writing groups and conferences I've been to the topic of research has come up from time to time. There are many different opinions on the subject, and many will tell you research is only necessary when you are writing about something you know very little to nothing about. But is this really the case and if it is, does your writing suffer from not doing research all the time? After writing many short stories and picture books for young readers, my opinion on doing research might be very different from yours. I have always felt research is critical no matter how much I know or don't know about a certain subject. There is always something I learn each time, even on topics I know a lot about as things are always changing, and changing fast sometimes these days. However, I thought I was just one of the weird writers out there feeling this way until I took a research workshop with James Patterson, who had this to say about research. "Research really he...