Pond Circle

1.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Franco, Betsy. 2009. Pond Circle. Ill. by Stefano Vitale. New York, Margaret K. McElderry. ISBN 1416940219

2.PLOT SUMMARY
The book is about the food chain focusing on lives in the water pond near a girl’s house. The author introduced several creatures and what they ate. The book started from the water pond by a girl named Anna’s house, and then introduced the jade green algae, the mayfly nymph, the diving beetle, the loud bullfrog, and up the food chain to the howling coyote. At the end of the book, the girl named Anna gave an overview of all of the animals, insects, and plants that the author mentioned earlier, such as where algae grows, mayflies dart, frogs spring, snakes swim, skunks shuffle, raccoons rummage, and coyotes howl. She also gave the connection between the book and the real world out of her window.


3.CRITICAL ANALYSIS
This is very fun, rhythmic poetry picture book. After reading through this book, the other book I read earlier entitled “The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” just came to my mind because they have similar sentence structure and story plot. There are several strengths of this book, including science, cognitive development, language, as well as rhythm.

The book is a good science supplement for students to understand how the food chain works in nature and improve language ability and fluency. The illustrations also help readers to understand the concepts and the author adds some rare names of animals, insects, and plant to enhance young reader’s vocabulary. As a person who is new English speaker where English is not the first language, the illustrations helped me to guess what the creature would look like and what actions the creatures used. For example, I did not know a nymph, beetle, skunk, or a coyote, until I saw the illustration of these creatures. Furthermore, the author used some action verbs that I was not familiar with, such as nibbled, gobbled, stalked, and dart. The illustrations helped me to understand the action that these verbs represented. Based on my personal experience, I believe this poetry picture book would be a good teaching supplement to expand children’s language learning, science concepts and enhance their imagination. With the illustrations, young readers could recognize and realize the names of the animals together.

The other strength I noticed was sentence structure and organization. Sentence structures are parallel, the same or similar, enabling readers to easily read aloud and memorize as they would a song. For instance, at the beginning of each new paragraph, as well as at the end of each paragraph, the author utilized the same sentences to emphasize rhythm and pattern. The first two lines are repeated in each new paragraph from the preceding one to create the meter of a poem. For instance, on page 11 to 12, the first two lines were “this is the snake, the garter snake”; on page 15-16, the first two lines were “This is the owl; the great horned owl.” At the end of each paragraph would be the line from the first page that said, “that filled the pond by Anna’s house’. Each new page, the author started with a new animal, plant, or insect, such as “this is algae, nymph, beetle, frog, owl, raccoon and coyote.” It is very well-designed and well-organized book. Each new page introduces new creatures presented in colorful illustrations that would catch the previous creature. In addition, readers could be intrigued to explore what creatures might become prey next.


Language and Rhyme
The author made language more vivid and actively used some powerful sensory adjectives emphasizing different animals, such as hungry raccoon, great horned owl, shy striped skunk, loud bullfrog, and the diving beetle. Furthermore, the author also employed some action verbs to construct the imagery for readers. For instance, on page 21to22, “Where algae grows, mayflies dart, beetles dive, frogs’ spring, snakes swim, skunks shuffle, owls swoop, raccoons rummage, and coyotes howl” These action verbs make the poem have a rhythm with vivid mental action pictures. Moreover, some expressions are funny and make people laugh, such as that “hungry raccoon, that stole the eggs, that dived for the skunk, that caught the snake, that swallowed the frog, that gobbled the beetle, as well as, that ate the nymph.”

In summary, the well-designed poetry is so amazing with many action verbs and colorful adjectives to emphasize the powerful language usage. Young readers not only can learn science knowledge, but also could enlarge their vocabulary and language fluency. I would highly recommend students to read it, especially ESL students. I have learned a lot of new knowledge and vocabulary from this book. It is a very interesting poetry book.

4.REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

The author indicated that this is a rhythmic, cumulative story with rich, luminous paintings that capture the bold beauty of nature. It presented a short journey from the backyard experiences of all these different creatures.

On Amazon.com, one consumer, D. Fowler, had similar thoughts as me. She indicated that she thoroughly enjoyed the storybook format of a pond food chain adventure. She believed that it is a great way to introduce children to ecology. The rhythmical text was a lot of fun and reminded me a lot of the song "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" because the text is repetitive and cumulative. (Amazon, 2011).

From the customer’s review on Amazon.com, Z. Hayes pointed out that the illustrations are so vivid and she was delighted by the rhythmic and flowing prose. She highly recommended that this book would be a great teaching supplement for the ecosystem in a pond and could be used for reading aloud.

5.CONNECTIONS

One relative book I have found is Hummingbird Nest by Kristine George. This poetry is an observant verse about hummingbirds. Through describing the observation, readers could closely see how the tiny birds emerge from the cracked eggshells. Pond Circle also provides a close view of the food chain cycle of life of the creatures in the pond. Both of them could be a good supplement for science and language courses.
George, Kristine O'Connell. 2004. Hummingbird Nest: A Journal of Poems. Orlando, Harcourt. ISBN 0152023259

The other relative book is a Caldecott Honor book entitled, In the Small, Small Pond. The author is both the writer and illustrator. The gorgeous illustrations and rhyming text were presented throughout the book. The book described the life cycle in a small pond.

Fleming, Denise. 1950. In the Small, Small Pond. New York, Henry Holt. ISBN 0805059830

Reference
Amazon. com., accessed March 5, 2011, http://www.amazon.com/Pond-Circle-Betsy-Franco/dp/1416940219
Google Book, accessed March 5, 2011, http://books.google.com/books

The article is created on March. 5, 2011