Sea Turtles

Title: Sea Turles
Author & Illustrator : Gibbons, Gail
Publisher: Scholastic Press, 2004
Genre: Picture Book, Nonfiction Literature
Age Range: 4th grade and Up

Summary: This is a book all about sea turtles. Gibbons takes the reader through all different aspects of sea turtles. (A pre-historic sea turtle, their characteristics, what makes them unique, where they live, where they lay their eggs, etc.) Gibbons even talks about how humans have effected sea turtles.

Response: I went on a week long adventure at Cape Lookout National Seashore last summer. We studied sea turtles (Cape Lookout is one of their main nesting sites.) That is why I chose this book. I love sea turtles and I actually learned some things I didn't know before. One of these things was that I didn't realize a leatherback sea turtle's shell isn't hard. I knew it was different than the other turtles, but I thought it was still hard. I also didn't know that Loggerhead's had to be at least 15 years old before they could lay eggs. I really enjoyed this book. It was"chok-full" of information on sea turtles and easy to understand, labeled pictures.

Teaching Ideas: This is a fantastic book to use when teaching reptiles. Gibbons clearly outlines the differences in sea turtles and land turtles. She also provides easy pictures to look at and see the parts of each. For older science classrooms, students could use this as a jumpstart into more research. Here is a website about Sea Turtles from the place I visited. Students could even use it to get started.

-jeana