A Log's Life

A Log's Life was a perfect addition to my 3rd grade science unit. We were studying the life cycles of plants and animals and how they provide shelter and food for animals and plants throughout the process. It was just right for my students to comprehend. The pictures are wonderfully done!I highly recommend this book to be a part of a classroom science library.

This beautiful book is a favorite! I have used it as a reading book for pleasure, and also for environmental science units for grades K - 5. All ages love it, and the kids take more from the incredible illustrations as they get older. Highly recommend for a home and/or classroom/school library!

I absolutely love this book and have used it with a variety of ages. Not only is the information clear and accurate, but the illustrations are outstanding. They are done all in paper (watercolored first) and are photographs of 3D "dioramas". Not only can you use this book to introduce life cycles, decomposition, etc. but you can use it as a lead in to some great art projects!

My 2 year old daughter loves this book, and so do I. The drawings are incredible (more so when you read that they are completely in water color), the text is beautiful and worth reading again and again(even though we often just marvel at the pictures and don't read all the text at my daughter's age), and what I so appreciate is the highly accurate description of log ecology,that is done so at a level exciting and accessible to a child. If you aren't well-versed in the ecology of rotting logs, this will be a great resource for you as a parent, as well, prior to "field trips" to the woods!

"A Log's Life" is a little masterpiece of children's literature that can become a child's favorite book. The amazing paper-sculpture photo illustrations of Robin Brickman and the sparse but powerful alliterative language of author Wendy Pfeffer unite to tell a important ecological story about the life OF a log and the life IN a log. No wonder this book won the 2000 Giverny Award for best children's science picture book! What's fun for children is searching for and finding the organisms in Brickman's artwork on succeeding pages, once each has been initially introduced in the text. And later, when they hike in the woods with their parents, they can actually SEE this story come alive in nature itself.