"A first-hand look at the vulnerable baby seals that are left on shore in the Pacific Northwest while their mothers hunt for food, and the concerned volunteers who keep vigil over them"--Provided by publisher.

In the Pacific Northwest, concerned volunteers become seal sitters, keeping vigil over the vulnerable baby seals that are left on the shore while their mothers hunt for food. Surviving in the animal kingdom is never easy and this informative picture book gives a first-hand look at what baby seals are up against. With its emphasis on human compassion, this true account teaches children to appreciate the natural world by helping in any way they can. The star of the book is six year old Miles, who organizes his own rescue mission to help the seals survive.

"This book is beautiful, brave, and important." -- Sy Montgomery In Wild Chorus, award-winning author Brenda Peterson draws on her lifelong relationship with animals to explore the wisdom we humans can glean from them. Looking beyond the companionship we enjoy with domesticated animals, Peterson explores how wild animals can become our guides and fellow travelers, helping us navigate the stresses of daily life and a rapidly changing planet. From beluga whales to wolves, raccoons to bears, elk to herons, the stories in this collection offer insights into the intricacies of animals’ intuitive communication, compassionate attention, and peaceful adaptation. Featuring vivid, visionary stories, Wild Chorus reveals a world filled with inspiring lessons of kinship, connection, and living in the present. Join Peterson on an incredible journey as she speaks for animals as both an artist and an activist to discover the power of learning from the natural world.

In the tradition of Peter Matthiessen's Wildlife in America or Aldo Leopold, Brenda Peterson tells the 300-year history of wild wolves in America. It is also our own history, seen through our relationship with wolves. The earliest Americans revered them. Settlers zealously exterminated them. Now, scientists, writers, and ordinary citizens are fighting to bring them back to the wild. Peterson, an eloquent voice in the battle for twenty years, makes the powerful case that without wolves, not only will our whole ecology unravel, but we'll lose much of our national soul.

"Do monarch butterflies have a nose?" a kindergartener inquires. "Does it rain on the moon?" a first-grader wonders. "Does a white shark really produce 30 million teeth?"asks a second grader. These incisive, critical quests for additional knowledge about the world are precisely what children do when the Common Core State Standards for informational texts go right in K-2. And with The Everything Guide to Informational Texts, the Common Core will go right in K-2. Authors Kathy Barclay and Laura Stewart have written the book that teachers like you have been pleading for—a resource that delivers the "what I need to know Monday through Friday" to engage kids in a significant amount of informational text reading experiences. No filler, no lofty ideals about college and career readiness, but instead, the information on how to find lesson-worthy texts and create developmentally appropriate instructional plans that truly help young readers comprehend grade-level texts. What you’ll love most: The how-to’s on selecting stellar informational texts High-impact comprehension strategies for nonfiction Suggestions on providing sufficient challenge in guided reading, read alouds, and other practices Model text lessons and lesson plan templates across each grade An annotated list of 449 informational texts for read alouds, guided reading, and independent reading It’s time to bring in to our classrooms all the high-quality informational texts that are available. It’s time to demonstrate to students how to read them, and to allow the authors of these children’s texts to take readers into rich, complex ideas they can handle with our support. If ever there were a book to quell our concern about how Common Core expectations will play out in grades K-2, this is it.

The Classroom Go-To Guide for the Common Core is the first in a series of comprehensive tools to tap into the vast flow of recently published books for children and teens, offering recommendations of exemplary titles for use in the classroom. Currency meets authority, brought to you by the editors of the highly regarded review sources, School Library Journal and The Horn Book Magazine. This guide includes approximately 200 selections published since 2007 for grades 4-6 recommended by The Horn Book Magazine. The titles are grouped by subject and complemented by School Library Journal’s “Focus On” columns, which spotlight specific topics across the curriculum. Providing context for the guide, and suggestions on how to use these resources within a standards framework, is an introduction by Common Core experts Mary Ann Cappiello and Myra Zarnowski. These experts provide perspective on the key changes brought by the new standards, including suggestions on designing lessons and two samples plans. Following the introduction, you’ll find a wealth of books, by category. Each section includes a listing of the top titles with brief, explicit annotations, and key bibliographic data. “Focus On” articles are appended to appropriate categories to support in-depth curricular development. Each of these articles includes a topic overview and list of current and retrospective resources (including some fiction), and multimedia, that will enable educators to respond to Common Core State Standards call to work across formats.