Dino-Football
Written by Lisa Wheeler
Illustrated by Barry Gott
The Greenblade Slackers and the Redscales go head to head in the action-packed Mega Bowl game in Dino-Football. If a teacher is looking to interest a very sports-minded boy in reading, this is a great option because it draws the reader into its plot.
This book promotes comprehension skills as the reader follows the play-by-play of the Mega-Bowl; the student must comprehend each page in order to follow the game. Any reader can appreciate Lisa Wheeler’s attention to detail as she lists the positions and dinosaurs in a roster at the beginning of the book. It would be exciting to see how enthusiastically a dinosaur-lover reads this roster with a dinosaur encyclopedia companion book. While the Lexile is 280, the football jargon is just difficult enough to put this into the third grade reading level.
Dino-Football gives students the opportunity to carefully examine the football jargon in text and in picture, as each play is colorfully illustrated. Though the book is full of football terminology, it is not merely a sports book; there are also subtle and overt science lessons within the book. The illustrations clearly put the herbivores, the Greenblade Slackers, versus the carnivores, the Redscales, giving a teacher the option to point out the physical differences between these two groups. As an extended learning opportunity within a unit on dinosaurs, students may have fun re-creating a scene from the book in a diorama. Teachers may also consider having the avid football fans change the outcome of the book by re-writing a few of the plays in the book. Third grade boys will love Dino-Football for its plot, and teachers will love it for its promotion of reading skills.
Visit the author’s website at: www.lisawheelerbooks.com/LW/Dino_Football.html
Title: Dino-Football- Author: Lisa Wheeler
- Illustrator: Barry Gott
- Publisher: Carolrhoda Books
- Reviewer: Sharon Schulte
- Hardback: 32 pages
- ISBN: 978-0-7613-6394-1
- Genre: fiction/fantasy – dinosaurs