From Egg to Robin

Welcome Books: How Things Grow

by Jan Kottke

Simple text and photographs show how an egg becomes a robin.

Genres: Birds

24 pages, Library Binding

First published September 1, 2000

Reviews

[Alexia Eller]

Summary: This book talks about baby robins. The book talks about a Robins life and all the stages of growing.

Evaluation: This book does a really good job showing order and sequence.

Teaching Idea: I could use this book to show students how to write an informational text by using an index, bold font, glossary, labeled picture, captions etc.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Egg to Robin follows the progression of eggs hatching, baby robins growing up, becoming independent, and then becoming parents on their own. At the end of the book are some definitions of new words, resources to learn more about birds, and an index of where words are located in the book. These additional features make the book a good example of a reference book, yet while remaining age appropriate.

This book would be a good addition to a unit study on robins. It could be used to introduce the changes with spring. For older children, it could be used as an example for a project where the children make their own reference books.

We repeatedly read the book and matched the photographs to what we saw in the robin’s nest outside, which was a lot of fun. I look forward to getting the other nonfiction books in this series.

Recommended age: 5-6 years

Writing style: Large font sentences on a white background. Key phrases are repeated in the book, such as "keep them warm" and "baby birds". There is repetition in the word choice as well to help reinforce concepts, such as nest, feathers, eggs, and food.

Lexile score: 180L
Decoding difficulty: 3/5
Vocabulary difficulty: 4/5
Sentences difficulty: 2/5
Patterns difficulty: 3/5

Illustration style: Photographs of robins and their babies related to the text on the page.

Reality-based: Yes, this is a nonfiction book about the life of robins.