The Very Busy Spider

Picture Book
Title: The Very Busy Spider
Author: Eric Carle
Ages: 2-6
Rating: 5 out of 5

Summary
The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle is about a spider who diligently works on creating her web, however, animals  from the nearby farm try to distract her but she refuses to answer and continues to work until it is complete.  When she finishes her web she shows how useful her web is and that it allows her to catch her meals.

Opinion
This book was one of my favorites growing up.  Although I am not a big bug fan, I always loved having my parents, brother, or babysitter read it to me.  The texture that the web has in the book always caught my attention and I was very interested in seeing what a spider web felt like.  As I am reading this book now, I think the author was very smart and provided a lot of great lessons from this book.  The repetition of the line, "The spider didn't answer.  She was very busy spinning her web", alows this book to be successfully used with beginner readers because according to,  Mem Fox: Reading Magic, by Judy Horacek, repetition in reading for beginners is essential and a   useful for them to pick up sounds and words.  I also think that the use of the different farm animals in the pictures and their designated sounds helps the reader learn about these animals in a fun way.  The illustrations were repetitive also and I think it worked in this particular book.  Normally repetitive books seem somewhat boring, especially to us as we read them but I think that the dialogue and pictures in this book worked out well.  On one page there is a large representation of the animal and on the other page is the spider making its web, which grows as the pages turn.

I would definitly use this book in my classroom because I think it is a great beginner book and allows children to learn about different animals, their sounds, and their characteristis.  I would use this book as an introduction to a unit on animals.  I think an appropriate activity for this book would be a matching game where they would match up a particular animal with its sounds.