Great Divide, The

"Many animals, like people, enjoy spending time with their friends and family. Many groups of animals have their own unique names. Did you know a group of gorillas is a called a band? And a bunch of billy goats is a tribe? Following in the footsteps of Multiply on the Fly (multiplication), What’s New at the Zoo? (addition) and What’s the Difference? (subtraction), this rhythmic, fun-to-read-aloud book introduces children to division as they conquer bands, tribes, mobs and more.

This nonfiction picture book with a cuddle factor and rhyming text includes a 4-page For Creative Minds section in the back of the book and a 57-page cross-curricular Teaching Activity Guide online. The Great Divide 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."

Written by Suzanne Slade, Illustrated by Erin E. Hunter
32 pg, 10 x 8.5, Ages 4-9, Grades PK-4, Lexile: AD 640, AR: 2.2, F&P: N

Author/Illustrator Info:

Suzanne Slade is the award-winning author of over 80 books for children including The Great Divide, Multiply on the Fly, What's the Difference?, What's New at the Zoo?, and Animals are Sleeping for Arbordale. Her works include picture books, biographies, and many non-fiction titles about animals, sports, and nature. One of her favorite parts of the writing process is researching and learning new things. Suzanne lives near Chicago with her husband Mike, two children, and their tiny dog Corduroy. She enjoys visiting schools in-person or during her live virtual author visits. Visit Suzanne's Website

As both a children's book and scientific illustrator, Erin Hunter specializes in entomological and botanical illustrations. She illustrated The Great Divide, Multiply on the Fly, and A Day on the Mountain for Arbordale, and she has taught botanical illustration and field sketching at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Erin's portfolio includes print and online design projects for clients ranging from marketing firms to culinary groups to educational organizations' and she's drawn insects under a microscope for the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. Erin lives with her husband on California's Monterey Peninsula. When she's not sketching and painting, she tends to flowers, fruit trees, and vegetables in her backyard garden. Visit Erin's website.

Reviews:

Slade uses an appealing formula to simultaneously teach readers about both animal collective nouns and division. Rhyming word problems followed by numerical equations introduce animal groups, including a ?charm? of hummingbirds, a ?crash? of rhinos, and a ?tribe? of billy goats. - Publishers Weekly

Because this beautifully illustrated book uses the groups and numbers in the text to teach division, a teacher could use it as a picture book or to engage children in these mathematical concepts. - Library Media Connection

On each spread of this clever picture book, a rhyming verse introduces the collective noun for a particular type of animal and then asks readers to determine how many creatures would be in each ?bale,? ?mob,? etc., if the group were divided into smaller numbers. - School Library Journal