Slowing Down for Learning

  
              Thanks to Alyson Beecher's Non-Fiction Picture Book Challenge at Kidlit Frenzy, everyone shares wonderful non-fiction picture books.

             Be sure to go here to Mary Lee's post at The Poetrepository for line number twenty-seven of the April Progressive Poem created by Irene Latham.

        I was reminded of the final line from a poem by Eve Merriam when I read this book:

A Lazy Thought
 

There go the grownups
To the office,
To the store.
Subway rush,
Traffic crush;
Hurry, scurry,
Worry, flurry.

No wonder
Grown ups
Don’t grow up
Any more.
It takes a lot
Of slow
To grow.

           April Pulley Sayre has included such a myriad of topics in this new book that I had to take it slow in order to absorb the information. (Perhaps it was her goal?) She writes of Mayflies living only a day, and wonders how time feels to them. Then there are the sequoias, growing slowly, but lasting long, so long that a timeline showing some "time" highlights of a tree ring go all the way back to 574BCE, before Athens became a city! There are pages about "slow stomachs" (digestion) and the speed of snails. I was mesmerized by the facts, and also by the way the information is presented with extraordinary creativity by Kelly Murphy.