The Life Cycle of a Penguin by Colleen Sexton

• Age Range: 4 - 8 years
• Grade Level: Kindergarten - 3
• Series: Blastoff! Readers: Life Cycle of A... Level 3 (Library)
• Library Binding: 24 pages

From Amazon: 

Penguins must complete their life cycle in very cold temperatures. To protect their eggs from the cold, penguins use brood patches. Students will watch a penguin chick hatch from an egg and grow into an adult.

 My review: The Life Cycle of a Penguin is a Blastoff! leveled reader from Scholastic. It's a level 3 book which means "it advances early-fluent readers toward fluency through increased text and concept load, less reliance on visuals, longer sentences, and more literary languages," (Scholastic). The book has four chapters, a glossary, a "to learn more" section and an index. The book makes words that can be found in the glossary bold print. I learned, from this book, that penguins are only native to the southern hemisphere of the world, which is something I did not know. 

The content isn't too hard for early readers, and the colors chosen for the book, while bright, aren't a distraction from the content. This book has pictures instead of illustrations, and the images are related to each section of the book.

This book is excellent for young readers, it's one they can read themselves and leveled books can give a sense of accomplishment to kids when they move up a level. I think many kids will enjoy this book, and others like it, so it would be a good option to include this series in a library collection.

Other books in this series:

The Life Cycle of a Butterfly

The Life Cycle of a Cat

The Life Cycle of a Dog

The Life Cycle of a Frog

The Life Cycle of a Sea Horse