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:

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Janet Halfmann: http://www.janethalfmannauthor.com April 22, 2014 at 10:43 AM

    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

Writing Prompt Monday: The Challenge

The idea is too basically express yourself on paper, learn how to use your five senses, or build upon an idea. Think back to when you were in school, it used to only take your teacher saying, “Write a paragraph or one page composition on any subject you want.” This was all it used to take to get those creative juices flowing, but what about now? If you are like me and most writers I know, you have most likely experience the dreaded word “Writer’s Block” from time to time. Getting past this wide-eyed, blank page stare can be hard, and the flashing cursor does not help matters. What is a writer to do? Well it does not matter if you are a New York Best-selling author or an aspiring author, we all need a little creative boost from time to time and that is where my Writing Prompt Monday comes in. In my search for a writing prompt for this week, I came across a great site called Creative Writing Prompts . They have over 300 writing prompts to get your creative juices flowin...
4 comments
Read more

Interview Friday with Author Maggie Lyons

Maggie Lyons was born in Wales and brought up in England before gravitating west to Virginia’s coast. She zigzagged her way through a motley variety of careers from orchestral management to law-firm media relations to academic editing. Writing and editing nonfiction for adults brought plenty of satisfaction but nothing like the magic she discovered in writing fiction and nonfiction for children. Several of her articles, poetry, and a chapter book have been published in the children’s magazines Stories for Children Magazine and knowonder! VS: I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today, Maggie. To get things started can you share what you do to help balance your writing life with your family life? Maggie: Very fortunately for me, I’m retired and my son left the nest some time ago. That doesn’t mean I have no other commitments, of course. In fact, I’m very busy as a freelance editor, but I do have the privilege of being able to control m...
4 comments
Read more

Guest Post Wed: Journaling and Personal Growth

Personal growth is the hot topic of the day. You'll notice that nearly every magazine you see, no matter whether it targets men or women, has one thing in common with all the rest: at least one article encouraging some kind of personal growth. These articles tell you about "empowerment," about growing as a person, about controlling your destiny, taking your life in both hands, and following your dreams. Do you need a magazine to tell you to take control of your life? Certainly not! You know deep in your heart whether your life is under control and moving in the direction you want for yourself, or whether you need to take measures to enable that self-control. Here is where you can use journaling to encourage personal growth. Journaling is a very old practice. Logs and field notebooks have been used by scientists, explorers, and travelers for centuries. During the Renaissance of the 14th through 17th centuries, journaling was extremely popular, as a focu...
1 comment
Read more