Actual Size

Jenkins, Steve. Actual Size. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004
ISBN:0-618-37594-5

Summary:
Jenkins features 18 amazing animals in his simple, beautiful picture book. The concept couldn’t be any more simple or entertaining. A life-size illustration of each animal is given along with a brief fact about the creature. For some creatures a page is far too large, like the dwarf goby, which Jenkins tells us is the smallest of all fish at 1/3 of an inch in length! Other creatures can only show off one part of their bodies because they would take a whole book up with their size. Some of these large animals are the giant squid, and the Alaskan brown bear. This book is beautifully illustrated, and at the end, the reader can see the “big picture” as Jenkins profiles each animal with an illustration of the whole body of the large animals and a magnified picture for each of the small animals.

Reviews:
Jenkins'newest presents a parade of cut-paper animals, each accompanied by a pithy line of text. The difference here is the scale: everything appears at actual size. Jenkins'masterstroke, though, is his inclusion of creatures both great and small, so while petite critters fit comfortably within 12-by-20-inch spreads, larger ones appear as evocatively cropped bits and pieces
Booklist (May 15, 2004 (Vol. 100, No. 18))


“A new exploration of the biological world, from one of the current masters of collage, features life-size-not scaled-representations of the extremes of the animal kingdom.” Kirkus Review (May 1, 2004)

Enrichment Activity:
This book allows for many cross curricular activities. One such activity would be measuring yourself. Pair students up and give them each a meter stick. Students then take turn measuring one another. They would then come up with a description (with the help of teacher or librarian) using that measurement and each write theirs on a piece of construction paper. Then students could draw part of their bodies on the paper- hand, foot, pigtail. . . At the end of this activity all of the pieces of construction paper would be collected and made into a book. What a way to remember a class- in actual size!