In Nancy Shaw's fun and clever Sheep Blast Off, a group of unassuming farm animals find themselves aboard a rocketship headed for space! It all begins innocently enough, when a spacecraft lands in the sheep's yard and they meander over to examine. After some tinkering, the bumbling sheep end up blasting off into the stratosphere and beyond! They encounter some technical difficulties including a scratch on the space shuttle and a near death experience after the autopilot fails but they are saved thanks to the help of some alien sheep friends. They return home, tired but exhilarated after their little space adventure.
Sheep Blast Off is by far the silliest book I've reviewed for this blog thus far but this doesn't mean that its value should be discounted. The book does utilize rather large vocabulary words for a picture book, including "stratosphere" and "weightlessness" so it would be great for younger readers as either a read aloud or a challenging practice for guided reading. The illustrations by Margot Apple are eyecatching and colorful, sure to hold children's interest and make them laugh out loud. My research into this author/illustrator pair found that they have published seven other sheep-related books together, so they would be a great way to introduce the concept of a book series to younger readers. Whether you read these books as a series or just Sheep Blast Off, they promise to be a fun and amusing read that will hold children's attention the whole way through.
Silly books are the best, in my opinion! They foster a sense of true enjoyment in reading, and inevitably capture the attention of children (and adults, too). I like how you mentioned the value of using books like this to introduce new vocabulary. I was thinking that this book would be a wonderful read-aloud for a science unit about outer space. It might be fun to have the children read the story, then offer explanations, based on what they have learned in science, about why sheep really cannot live in outer space. You mentioned that the author and illustrator of this book have actually written a series. I wonder if there are any common themes (other than sheep, of course) that tie their series together.
ReplyDeleteI really like Heather's idea about having students discuss why this couldn't really work. Silly is great for younger kids. I like reading about books with little content value but that are great for read-alouds and just pure enjoyment.
ReplyDelete