Reviewed by Tracy Alley
Teacher & Coordinator of Gifted Programs, Madeira City Schools & Adjunct Professor for the University of Cincinnati
"What’s your favorite food? It’s probably not worms, blood, or elephant droppings, but there are animals that thrive on these foods.” This is how this delightful picture book begins. Children from preschool through elementary will enjoy the information found within the pages of the creatively illustrated and well–written book about how animals eat.
The torn and cut–paper collage illustrations will engage children. The fascinating facts and rich vocabulary on each page, such as the giant panda chews bamboo shoots for twelve hours, or the anaconda needs only four or five meals a year will shock children. In the story, there is only one fact about each of the seventeen animals; however, the appendix provides an informative paragraph about each animal mentioned. This would be a nice book for research reports or a read–aloud. Steve Jenkins has been producing quality and award–winning children’s non–fiction for many years. He and his wife, Robin Page, collaborate on their books with help from their three children. They have an extensive home library which they use daily to aid in their writing and illustrating. Plus, they visit museums, zoos, and aquariums to hunt for more information to utilize in their books.
As a teacher, I have all of their books in my classroom library. My students enjoy them immensely. I would highly recommend Time to Eat as well as the other two books in the series, Time to Sleep, and Time for a Bath. Kids will relate human behavior with animal behavior and never forget some of the cool, gross, amazing, and disturbing things they will discover about animals!
Review posted on 4/17/2012
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