River Beds: Sleeping in the World’s Rivers

This sequel to the award-winning Water Beds: Sleeping in the Ocean (2007 Teacher’s Choice & 2005 Mom’s Choice) takes readers on an around-the-world boat ride to learn how mammals sleep in or around nine major rivers of the world on all continents except Antarctica. Row down the Mississippi and watch two river otters slip into a hollow tree or look to the bank of the Brisbane River as a platypus pops into a hole and disappears into a narrow tunnel. Told in a soothing style, this book serves as a bedtime/naptime story for younger children or an animal geography book for older children. Adults may learn something, too! The ＂For Creative Minds＂ education section features a ＂World Map.＂ This nonfiction picture book with a cuddle factor includes a 5-page For Creative Minds section in the back of the book and a 23-page cross-curricular Teaching Activity Guide online. River Beds is vetted by experts and designed to encourage parental engagement. Its extensive back matter helps teachers with time-saving lesson ideas, provides extensions for science, math, and social studies units, and uses inquiry-based learning to help build critical thinking skills in young readers. The Spanish translation supports ELL and dual-language programs. The interactive ebook reads aloud in both English and Spanish with word highlighting and audio speed control to promote oral language skills, fluency, pronunciation, text engagement, and reading comprehension.

Award-winning illustrator Connie McLennan has been a freelance artist for over 25 years, since attending Academy of Art College in San Francisco. In addition to illustrating Ready, Set...Wait! (Fall 2010), she has also illustrated Mother Osprey: Nursery Rhymes for Buoys & Gulls, The Rainforest Grew All Around, River Beds: Sleeping in the World’s Rivers, Water Beds: Sleeping in the Ocean, and Octavia and her Purple Ink Cloud for Arbordale Publishing. Her studio is at her home in California, where she lives with her husband, teenage son, and one big, black cat. Visit Connie’s website: http: //www.conniemclennan.com/