These two new board books from Happy Fox Books are so cool.  They make a great introduction to biology in certain ecoystems for preschoolers, but they’re fun enough that my elementary schoolers were excited to read them, and I enjoy looking at them, too.  Written by Petra Bartiková and illustrated by Marcel Králik, the two titles are Discovering the World of Nature Along the Riverbank and Discovering the Secret World of Nature Underground.

Discovering…the Riverbank & Underground

These two books are board books, so they’re very sturdy.  I didn’t measure them, but I think they’re about 10 inches square.  The front half of each book is comprised of shaped, cutout pages, so each forms a layered scene, with depth and foreground, background, etc.  (Hint: You can use this as a tangible illustration when you’re teaching the concept of perspective in art.)  

There are also cutouts in these pages, so the reader gets a peek at what’s under the ground or under the water.

Animal Profiles

The bulk of the text content is comprised of brief snippets about individual creatures depicted.  For example, we read about the beaver’s tail and the function of a beaver dam in the Along the Riverbank and the difference between a mole and a vole in Underground.

Underground touches on a lot of animals you might see in a typical backyard, as well as some basic “forest” creatures: mice, shrews, skunks, rabbits (& how they differ from hares), badgers, foxes, moles, voles, ants, & other insects, worms, groundhogs, snails, bumblebees.

Along the Riverbank touches on muskrats, water snakes, otters, beavers, crayfish, frogs, toads, bears, salmon & other fish, newts, salamanders, turtles, dragonflies, and a number of birds, including coots, kingfishers, storks, cormorants, grebes, swans, & penduline tits.  It also includes a brief mention of water plants.

Deeper Science Concepts

Between them, though, these books also seamlessly introduce deeper biological and ecological concepts.  We see the life cycle of frogs (overtly) and of ants (a bit more subtly).

We read about the food chain Along the Riverbank, including a nod to decomposition (although that term is not used).

And several similar animals are compared and contrasted or described in terms that facilitate discussion of their classification — like this bit describing certain traits of fish:

What You Can Cover

If you’re a My Father’s World user, you’ll find Along the Riverbank touches on a handful of the Kindergarten topics: frogs, insects, turtles, water, and, indirectly, nests.

Apart from the “bonus” feature of being able to teach perspective & composition for art, you can use these to introduce and discuss:

• biology
• zoology, ecology, & botany (a little)
• life cycles of frogs & insects
• food chain (producers, consumers, decomposers)
• animal classification (includes mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, insects, crustaceans, worms [annelids], gastropods)
• adaptations
• habitats
• seasons (how the beavers prepare for winter)
• fossils
• comparing & contrasting (moles/voles, rabbits/hares, frogs/toads, turtles/tortoises, newts & salamanders/lizards)

Summary

There is one brief reference to the dragonfly’s “most distant ancestors liv[ing] here before the dinosaurs,” which may give some readers pause, but it’s pretty easily glossed over.

Overall, these are beautifully illustrated, interactive, and open up a lot of possibilities for organic exploration of ecosystems.