A beautifully illustrated book about the jungle and it's creatures. The author phonetically writes some animal sounds and keeps the story interesting with some pages having many words and some, few. Recommended for a study of continents or jungle biomes.

Describes the tropical rainforest and life found there.

For me, 3.5 stars. Just a bit too simplistic in content, and some of the lines from the poem get a little purple: a lunge of waking lizards, / a plunge of silver fish." Still, it is very pretty, and worth at least a look." ( )

Book Summary: This book explores the many different types of plants and animals living in the rain forest. Using rhyme and repetition, this book informs children of the various rain forest creatures that exist without being in the format of a traditional information book. The whole book is a metaphor, comparing the jungle to a giant greenhouse.

Content Summary: Students can learning about the rain forest habitat by reading this book. This book uses descriptive adjectives to produce imagery and is a great way to learn new adjectives. Animals are hidden in the full page illustrations and students love to look for them.

Website: http://www.eduplace.com/science/sla/tg/1/welcome_tg.html

Welcome to the Green House is an informational book about tropical rainforests. In this book, the author and illustrator have made it easy for the reader to visit the rainforest through vivid illustrations and elegantly written text. This text introduces readers to the many life forms, temperature, sounds and vivid colors that can be found in a tropical rainforest.

The illustrations in this book are amazing and the text is so descriptive. Through reading the story/test, it is easy to feel as if you are on location experiencing the scenes as they happen. This is a good example of how informational text can be written in a non-boring manner that will excite children about learning.

In the classroom I would definitely use this book and can think of many ways I could incorporate it as a teaching tool. As a classroom extension idea, I would love to incorporate an art project with this text. I would ask the students to pick their favorite text from the story (each page describes a new scene) and illustrate a page for the text. For example this is the text on one page, “ …and the quick-fingered capuchin make their slow-quick ways from room to room in the green house, in the dark green, light green, emerald green, blue green, ever-new green house.” The author has been so descriptive in her word choice that I believe the children will be able to envision what she is writing about and create neat pictures to illustrate her text. As a second idea, I would lead the children on an exploration of the rainforest. We would study the animals in the text because many of the animals mentioned are not the common animals children know already. We would locate tropical rainforests on a map so that the children can learn where rainforests exist. ( )