Bat & Owl Books

My class had so much fun learning all about bats and owls last week! There are some great books out there about bats and owls-both fiction and nonfiction. Here are some of my favorites.

I think my favorite book about bats is Hello, Bumblebee Bat by Darrin Lunde. This cute book is written in a question and answer format, and tells all about the smallest bat in the world- the bumblebee bat. After reading this book, we of course had to find out what the smallest owl in the world is- the elf owl.

I just happened to spot a wonderful book about elf owls at the Scholastic book fair my school had last month. It is called The Perfect Place for an Elf Owl. You absolutely have to check it out-it was written by first and second grade students! It has a darling repeating format, where a baby elf owl looks for his mama owl in all different environments (the forest, the arctic, etc.) so you get info on the owls that live in all of those different places. Finally at the end of the book the baby owl finds his mama where elf owls live-in a cactus nest in the desert. My students adored this book-because they could tell the illustrations were made by kids like them. There are also several pages at the back of the book with photos of the book's student authors researching owls and writing the book-so inspiring for my young writers!

We read many informational books during our study of bats and owls. Gail Gibbons is a great nonfiction author and my students enjoyed learning tons of facts from her Bats book and her Owls book. We learned about the different kinds of bats and owls, where they live, what they eat, and so much more! There are great diagrams in these books too for the parts of an owl/bat. After reading these two books we had lots of good information to use to compare bats and owls.

If you're looking for unbelieveable photos, you have to check out Seymour Simon's books. His nonfiction book Amazing Bats has amazing photos that fascinated my kindergarteners. There were lots of up close shots of bats and even little baby bats!

Two fun fiction stories about bats are Bat Jamboree and Bats Around the Clock. Both books are written by Kathi Appelt and have really cute illustrations. I especially like these two bat books because they can be used to tie in math concepts. Bat Jamboree is a counting book and Bats Around the Clock can be used for teaching about telling time to the hour. Both of these books also rhyme-which is always fun!

I have to admit, I'm a little sad to move on to studying fire safety this week since I don't have nearly as many good books around that theme! If you have any fun book recommendations for the month of October-please share. I am a total book addict and love finding new books to add to my classroom collection!