Actual Size
Summary: In Actual Size you can see just how you measure up to members of the animal kingdom. After the fascination has worn off from comparing your hand to a gorilla’s, you can read the other amazing facts at the end of the book to learn more about each animal.
Summary of Professional Reviews: Cut-paper collages are used to create life-sized features of eighteen different animals. Some of the creatures are small enough to fit on the page, while others are so big only a piece of them can be seen. This book highlights the extremes of the animal kingdom. The last four pages include additional facts about all of the creatures.
Review by Crystal Ball: Elephants and tigers and bears, oh my! Actual Size lives up to the name. Steve Jenkins takes the racial idea of illustrating animals in their genuine stature and brings it to fruition, including a creature whose head is so large that Jenkins needed to create a fold out page so it would fit. A child, or adult for that matter, can see how their head compares to the eye of a giant squid or put their hand in the mouth of a great white shark. Jenkins provides a few vital statistics on each page with the creature, and he also uses the last pages to give in depth facts about the featured animals. He takes the biggest of the big and the smallest of the small to underscore the variety in nature. Young children would delight in the ability to measure up against these critters, while older children can deepen their knowledge of each animal. Jenkins illustrations have a rich texture, and the very simple backgrounds perfectly emphasize the subjects.
This book would be useful when teaching…
Actual Size would be a great addition to a science or math lesson. Students would naturally compare and contrast the featured animals. The vital statistics could become math equations. For example. How long would an atlas moth be if you took away a dwarf goby? 12 inches - .5 inches = 11.5 inches
It also lends itself to learning about geography. In the final four pages Jenkins includes where the animals live. A class could map out the home countries of the animals and see if there are any similarities or patterns.