Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf: Informational Book

The book "Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf" by Louis Ehlert is a great picture book for children with interactive activities at the end. She brings a personal experience from her childhood, or so I assume it is, to help her explain her joy of nature. The book starts off with a picture of the actual first spring leaf of her sugar maple tree before she begins the story of how the tree came to be. To portray the idea of how old trees can be, she tells the read that the tree was born long before her and started off as a seed; hidden from the squirrels and covered with snow until spring. Once spring came, it's roots took ground and the tree started to grow. She then tells how nursery workers came into the woods to collect tree sprouts to take back to the nursery so that they could grow even more. Until they are uprooted again, wrapped up and taken to the garden center. That she where she picked out her tree and took it back home where her dad planted it. Going through each season, she tells the reader what changes she likes to see and then ends at fall with all the different colors being her favorite. The last couple of pages have descriptions of different parts of the tree, the right time to pick out a tree and how to plant it. One the last page are directions on how to make a bird treat to hang on trees.
The book has many different words that can be used as new vocabulary for students such as; maple tree, twirled, whirled, squirrels, sprouted, unfolded, etc. It is an easy read for students to listen to, but might be too difficult for them to read on their own depending on their grade. I think it would be a great book for the fall to help the students relate to the changing color of the leaves and differences to notice from season to season. I really liked the pictures she used. They are a mixture of real things like tree leaves and branches along with paper cut-outs. It gives the pages the appearance of texture that you want to touch. The definitions and details about the different parts of the tree at the end of the story would be great to help build the book into a lesson plan. The directions on how to make the bird treat seem very simple and would be a very fun activity for the students to do and take home or hang on the trees at school. I did like the book but I think that I would find other book to use if I were to make a lesson plan on the topic that will put variety into the reading. I really liked the pictures and I have not seen another children's book that does the art like her.