WPS Summer Reading List: Great Nonfiction

Animals smooth and spiky, fast and slow, hop and waddle through the two hundred plus pages of the Caldecott Honor artist Steve Jenkins's most impressive nonfiction offering yet. Sections such as "Animal Senses," "Animal Extremes," and "The Story of Life" burst with fascinating facts and infographics that will have trivia buffs breathlessly asking, "Do you know a termite queen can produce up to 30,000 eggs a day?" Rounding out this bountiful browsers' almanac of more than three hundred animals is a discussion of the artist's bookmaking process, an animal index, a glossary, and a bibliography. A bookshelf essential!

In a spare, powerful text and evocative illustrations, the Newbery medalist Katherine Applegate and the artist G. Brian Karas present the extraordinary real story of a special gorilla. Captured as a baby, Ivan was brought to a Tacoma, Washington, mall to attract shoppers. Gradually, public pressure built until a better way of life for Ivan was found at Zoo Atlanta. From the Congo to America, and from a local business attraction to a national symbol of animal welfare, Ivan the Shopping Mall Gorilla traveled an astonishing distance in miles and in impact. This is his true story and includes photographs of Ivan in the back matter.

Up close with the ocean's most fearsome and famous predator and the scientists who study them--just twenty-six miles from the Golden Gate Bridge ! A few miles from San Francisco lives a population of the ocean's largest and most famous predators. Each fall, while the city's inhabitants dine on steaks, salads, and sandwiches, the great white sharks return to California's Farallon Islands to dine on their favorite meal: the seals that live on the island's rocky coasts. Massive, fast, and perfectly adapted to hunting after 11 million years of evolution, the great whites are among the planet's most fearsome, fascinating, and least understood animals.

Young, up-and-coming illustrator William Grill weaves a detailed visual narrative of Shackleton's journey to Antarctica. Grill's beautiful use of colored pencils and vibrant hues effortlessly evokes the adventure and excitement that surrounded the expedition. His impeccably researched drawings, rich with detail, fastidiously reproduce the minutiae of the expedition. Children will love examining the diagrams of the peculiar provisions and the individual drawings of each sled dog and packhorse. This book takes the academic and historical information behind the expedition and reinterprets it for a young audience.

The second in a series of humorous books about disgusting creatures, The Worm is a look at the earthworm. It covers such topics as the worm's habitats (sometimes they live inside other animals), its anatomy (its muscle tube is slimy and gross), and its illustrious history (worms have been on earth for 120 million years). Although silly and off-the-wall, The Worm contains real information that will tie in with curriculum.

Why do you have feathers growing out of your head? They aren't feathers; they're gills! They let me breathe underwater. Let's face it. Even as babies, we humans pay close attention to faces. Observing another person's features and expressions tells us whether they are happy, angry, excited, or sad. Packed with many cool facts and visuals on where certain animals live and what they eat, this book captures twenty-five humorous and very true explanations of why animals look the way they do in order to exist in this world.

What do grizzly bear cubs eat? Where do baby raccoons sleep? And how does a baby otter learn to swim? Every baby mammal, from a tiny harvest mouse "pinky" to a fierce lion cub, needs food, shelter, love, and a family. Filled with illustrations of some of the most adorable babies in the kingdom, this awww-inspiring book looks at the traits that all baby mammals share and proves that, even though they're born in the wild, they're not so very different from us, after all!

Caldecott artist Molly Bang and M.I.T. professor Penny Chisholm present the fascinating, timely story of fossil fuels. What are fossil fuels, and how did they come to exist?

A delightful exploration of the incredibly variety of nests birds build for their babies, illustrated by a Caldecott Honoree. Mama built a little nest inside a sturdy trunk. She used her beak to tap-tap-tap the perfect place to bunk. There are so many different kinds of birds-and those birds build so many different kinds of nests to keep their babies cozy. With playful, bouncy rhyme, Jennifer Ward explores nests large and small, silky and cottony, muddy and twiggy-and all the birds that call them home!

From the award-winning creators of An Egg Is Quiet, A Seed Is Sleepy, A Butterfly Is Patient, and A Rock Is Lively comes this gorgeous and informative look at the fascinating world of nests. From tiny bee hummingbird nests to orangutan nests high in the rainforest canopy, an incredible variety of nests are showcased here in all their splendor. Poetic in voice and elegant in design, this carefully researched book introduces children to a captivating array of nest facts and will spark the imaginations of children whether in a classroom reading circle or on a parent's lap.

Everyone loves chocolate, right? But how many people actually know where chocolate comes from? How it’s made? Or that monkeys do their part to help this delicious sweet exist? This delectable dessert comes from cocoa beans, which grow on cocoa trees in tropical rain forests. But those trees couldn't survive without the help of a menagerie of rain forest critters: a pollen-sucking midge, an aphid-munching anole lizard, brain-eating coffin fly maggots.

Pulled from the pages of the wildly popular ZooBorns blog, this picture book presents the most charming critters ever: baby animals, ranging from the adorable to the zany! Featuring full-color photographs on every page and a cozy text perfect for reading aloud, this book is bound to become a must-have for animal lovers of all ages.