I liked this book for many reasons. One thing that I really enjoyed about this book was the way in which it was organized. It walks through a typical day of a mother cheetah and her cubs, and includes their daily activities, how they sleep, and what they do when they wake up in chronological order. While telling about these different parts of their day, the author incorporates additional information and facts about cheetahs, such as how the mother cheetah protects her cubs and what the cheetahs eat. I also like that it shows how the cubs develop over time. For example, they begin by depending on their mother for food and protection but by the end of the story the cubs are grown cheetahs that now know how to survive on their own. Another reason I liked this book was because of the illustrations. I thought that it was an interesting approach to include drawings rather than real pictures of cheetahs in an informational book. I believe that these illustrations would be more appealing to the younger children that this book is geared towards. The illustrations also accurately depict what is being said in the text of the story. For example, they included a close up illustration of just the cheetahs fur on the page that describes what a cheetahs fur is like. The illustrations are extremely realistic which I believe adds a lot to the story. I also liked the language use and writing in this book. It was written with simple vocabulary that was easy to understand, while still giving a great deal of information about these animals. This clear and concise language is easy to follow and clearly gets the information across. I believe that the big idea that this story is trying to get across is that all animals grow and are babies at one point but develop overtime. They showed this by explaining the lifecycle of the cheetah. ( )

I liked this Lucia Washburn's illustrations much more than the usual photographs you find in these informational/educational easy readers. This book is pretty long for one sitting for a newer reader though. COULD ACCOMPANY A SCIENCE/BIOLOGY UNIT ABOUT ANIMALS.